A New Discussion Over Prevention Of Adolescent Crime

The status of adolescent morality and law-abiding is a very important subject, as it is related to their own healthy development, happiness of thousands of families, quality of the whole Chinese nation, and the development of our socialist cause. The problem of adolescent crime, which has become one of the three world public hazards, is getting more and more serious and has caused widely social concerns. Adolescence is a sociological concept. Adolescent crime is a concept derived from sociology and criminology, not a crime explained by criminal law. In China, adolescent crime refers to the criminal behavior committed by adolescence from fourteen to twenty-five years old, which endangers the society and violates the criminal law and subjects to punishment.During the period of social transformation, profound changes are undergoing in political, economical, and cultural systems, and sharp conflicts between new and old systems, ideas, and cultures are taking place. Adolescent crime has many characters, such as a high proportion of property-type crime, predominant gang crime, great influenced by family, and high crime rate of problem students. At the same time, higher crime rate, violence crime, and network crime are becoming the basic trend of adolescent crime. Prevention of adolescent crime is a systematic project. Currently, there are many problems existing in adolescent crime prevention, including unstable basis of moral education, problems appearing in legal education, increasingly serious psychological problems, and defects in moral education environment.Moral education and legal education are two fundamental effort points in adolescent crime prevention. Moral education is the foundation of adolescent crime prevention. Moral interiorization could prevent people's criminal act directly and effectively. Legal education is the important guarantee of adolescent crime prevention. Strengthening youngsters' education in legality, popularizing of basic knowledge of law, cultivating students'good behavior, improving their ability of distinguishing and self-protection, are important contents in improving legal consciousness and law-abiding of adolescence. According to the principle of dual-element balance between morality and legality, there are two fences in adolescent crime prevention. The first one is moral education, and the second one is legal education. Two fences should be both strengthened at the same time, in order to achieve the strong dynamic balance between moral and legal education.Carrying out systemic moral and legal education, paying more attention to adolescent psychological factors and moral education environment, introducing the theory of restorative justice from western countries, and taking active measures in adolescent crime prevention and correction, are all beneficial attempts in adolescent crime prevention in the new era. Strengthening both moral and legal education and achieving interactive balance between them, are basic requirements in adolescent crime prevention in the new period.