Youth Victimisation: About Violence Perpetrated Against The Youth (Essay Sample)

The Prevalence and Implication of Youth Victimization
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The Prevalence and Implications of Youth Victimization
Youth victimization refers to the violence that people perpetrate against young individuals within the society. Some of the primary forms of crimes that are used by people to perpetrate youth victimization include physical attacks, sexual assaults like rape and molestation, and crimes like theft and bullying (Greene & Gabbidon, 2009). In the U.S. youths victimized by issues such as aggravated assaults, rape, and robbery (Child Trends, 2014). With this understanding, this report discusses the prevalence of youth victimization in the U.S. and its implications. Upon the gathering of the findings regarding the subject of study in the report, a point of view will be described as well as the weaknesses and strength of this research.
Prevalence of Youth Victimization
Currently, the rates of individual victimizations for young people aged 12 to 17 have extremely become high in the United States. In any type of crime, the Blacks and Native American adolescents are more victimized more than youths from the Whites, Asian, and Hispanic communities. National Institute of Justice (2003) writes that most of the sexual assaults of young adults in the U.S. (86%) go unrecognized while 65% of the physical assaults for the youth are unreported (National Institute of Justice, 2003). Similarly, between 1995 and 2003, the sexual assaults of youths between 12 and 17 years were 1.8 million, while 3.9 million adolescents were exposed to different forms of physical attacks. In the same period, at about 2.1 million youth reported encountering physical abuse, which is also viewed as a form of adolescent victimization. Another significant thing to note in reference to youth victimization is the aspect of gender. From 2012 to 2014, male adolescent aged 12 to 14 years were more likely to encounter any form of violence than youth females in America (Child Trend, 2014). At the same time, in 2012 and 2014, the male youth between the ages of 15 and 17 were more likely to be the victims of robbery crimes, while female adolescents were mostly exposed to simple attack and rape.
Implications
Adolescent victimization has severe consequences on the school performance for young individuals. As such, when young adults are victimized to either physical or sexual attack, the chances are that the person will be at the risk of being depressed and exposed to drugs, which will affect his or her performance in the school (Wordes & Nunez, 2002). Another implication of youth victimization is that when youths become victims of crimes in their age, they are likely to become an offender when they become adults. In an NCCD analysis, it is presented that of the youths who are violent offenders; only 5% are not in the category of being victimized in the past years (Wordes & Nunez, 2002). Based on these findings, it is apparent that the repercussion of youth victimization can cause immediate problems to young people at their current age and in the future.
Strength and Weaknesses of the Report
Strength
The report shows the prevalence of adolescent victimization for both male and female individuals in the United States. As male youths are likely to be exposed to physical crimes, female, young adults’ faces the same problem, but encounters sexual assaults victimization more compared to the boys in the society. The report strengths can also be identified based on the findings regarding the race and community where youth victimization is high. In terms of race, the youths from the minority community are exposed to victimization issue more than the adolescent from the majority community.
Weaknesses
On this note, the weakness of this report would be derived from the published information used to assemble the findings on the issue of youth victimization. One of the notable limitations in this discussion would be that the findings used are not based on the nationally representative sample, as the published data presented did not include adolescent who are homeless, the youths who are in juvenile, as well as young people in correctional facilities.
Comment on the Findings
Based on the f...