Juvenile Crime in the 21st Century: A Really Escalating Problem or Just a Media Sensation? The Case of Croatia
Purpose:
The main goal of the paper is to analyse dynamics of juvenile crime and to identify long-term tendencies in the development of this negative social phenomenon in Croatia in this century.
Design/Methods/Approach:
Based on official police statistics, the analysis of the dynamics and the average rate of change are used to reveal and compare trends in reported overall, violent, and juvenile property crime in Croatia between 2000 and 2013. Model of a linear trend is used to make a prediction of future short-time trends.
Findings:
Though the total number of reported juvenile crime is stable or even slightly declining over the observed period, there are exceptional increases or declines in certain years and in certain offences, which can create the wrong impression about alarming changes. It especially applies to the oscillations of the number of reported juvenile homicide and rape, because of small absolute numbers. Substantial and significant fluctuations during the observed period, are found in reported rates for robbery and theft: there is a decrease in reported theft and increase in reported robbery.
Originality/Value:
In Croatia, but also in other post-socialist countries in Central Eastern Europe, there are general beliefs of the dramatic increase in juvenile crime rates since late 1990s. Results of this study reveal how such cursory review obscures some long-term and significant changes in juvenile crime, which are indicative when speaking about the juvenile crime under conditions of intensive social change.
UDC: 343.915(497.5)
Keywords: juvenile, overall crime, violent crime, property crime, Croatia, trends