Socioeconomic aspect of juvenile delinquency in the Republic of Serbia

Abstract

Juvenile delinquency is a widespread sociopathological and security phenomenon, which, due to its increasingly serious forms and consequences, deserves more attention from scholars and professional experts, that is, the general public. The consequences of some violent acts, which produce victims, committed by juveniles are so serious that this phenomenon first requires a comprehensive understanding, then resolving the cause. This paper focuses on sociological theories and such an aspect of the approach to the causes of juvenile delinquency. The tendencies of juvenile crime are observed from the aspect of socioeconomic situation in society and the position and functionality of families, and above all, through the prism of the data obtained from centers for social work and the records of the Ministry of the Interior of the Republic of Serbia. This paper seeks to present the trend of socioeconomic vulnerability of families, social service interventions in families with violence and the number of juveniles who needed some service provided by the center for social work, to show whether the values of these factors follow each other and what trends we can expect. The data generated by the Republic Institute for Social Protection, which is obtained from all centers for social work refers to the period 2015-2019. The years 2020 and 2021 are specific to research and certainly require a broader analysis, given the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic, the declaration of a state of emergency, the imposition of curfew and numerous other regulatory measures to prevent the spread of infection, which we believe has had an impact on crime rates in general, even juvenile delinquency.