Evolución del tipo de delito cometido por menores en los últimos años

Abstract

The juvenile criminal behaviour has turned into a burning topic, being common to find daily in the every days news that have children and youngsters as protagonists, who commit criminal and anti-social behaviours. It is said about the increase of the crimes committed for juveniles, which has generated, in the latest times, a great alarm in the society on the whole. Furthermore, it seems that theses crimes have become more serious and they are committed by younger and younger juveniles. All this is contributing to question even more the Organic Law (O.L.) 5/2000 Regulating the Juveniles´ Penal Responsibility, due to the sensation of impunity for the crimes committed by juveniles, despite the successive modifications have made the current Law more and more restrictive and punitive. With the objective of deeper into the knowledge of this serious social problem and to prove if there have really been changes in the nature of the young offenders´ criminal behaviours, in this paper a total of 456 closed judicial files from the Service of Juvenile Justice in Jaén have been analyzed. The crimes committed by young offenders were registered, since the moment when the current O.L. came into effects to nowadays. It is also analyzed both the frequency of crimes committed during this period and the evolution by year of the types of crimes. In the analysis are included the differences according to the gender and the age of the young offenders. The results are discussed.