From 1990 to the present there has been a sharp increase in juvenile crime across the United States. From 1996 to presently there has been a slight decline from the statistics in 1995(OJJDP). What was the cause for this uprise in juvenile delinquency? I will discuss 2 different theories to why there was such an increase in juvenile crime rates. I will analyze the rise of the "Gangster-Rap" culture in the early 1990's and how it may have affected teenagers that are in lower- income families. Many people believe that the increase in real life violence on television is a cause for violence in juveniles. I will discuss the evidence for this theory.

It seems to me that the best theory to explain the rise in juvenile crime is the social constructionist theory. Different sub-cultures of teens have higher crime rates than others because of their interests, whether it be the music that they listen to or the types of television programs that they watched as child. In the early 1990's a new form of Hip-Hop music appeared in America known as Gangster-Rap. This style of Hip-Hop had lyrics pertaining to killing police, gang warfare, guns, and robberies. This s

Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention. [On-line]. Available:

Many vital statistics will come out of these studies. These statistics can be used to study

tyle of music perked interest in teenagers across the country. Song titles such as "F*ck the Police" gave laughter to teenagers in middle and upper class America, but for these rap artists, the lyrics they wrote were their way of life. The Gangster-Rap culture came straight from the worst neighborhoods on the Pacific Coast of the United States, where this kind of lifestyle was led by 1000's of people stuck in the slums of America. Could the lyrics from these kinds of songs promote violence in low-income areas where teens look up to these Rap artists? Teenagers that grow up in neighborhoods that are considered low-income (more so in larger cities than suburban areas) have a very low amount of opportunities to leave these areas and become successful in life.

Another example is the hippie culture. Driven by 60's music that preached peace and exercised what they heard in the music that they cherished. They promoted peace and protested against things such as war and hate. I point out that all of the people that are part of these cultures surrounding music, for the most part, use the music they listen to and incorporate it into their belief systems and their ways of everyday life. As I have said earlier, Gangster-Rap lyrics revolve around guns, violence, crime, and drugs. Juveniles that are influenced easily by the music that they hear, incorporate these things into their way of thinking. This I believe is what was responsible for the rise in violence from 1990 to 1995. Gangster-Rap doesn't preach peaceful confrontation and working out problems. Teens that live in slums would seem to be more prone to follow the words the rap artists that they look up to because of the similarities in their circumstances. This in theory is what has driven more teens than ever to get involved in crime.

a TV was a luxury), many people believe that this is the cause for more crimes being committed by teens in America. In order to conduct my research on showing that these 2 cases are the prevalent factors in the increase of juvenile violence from 1990 up to the present, I will need funding. I wish to perform a cohort study on a population of 5000 boys [only boys because of "the greater incidence,

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Approximate Word count = 1606
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page double spaced)