Patterns And Causes Of Juvenile Delinquency As Expressed By Secondary School Students
[A CASE STUDY OF IBARAPA LOCAL GOVERNMENT AREA, OYO STATE]

ABSTRACT
The challenges of adolescents are enormous simply because of diverse growth and development that characterized this stage, this lead many adolescents into delinquent behaviours. This study thus investigated the patterns and causes of delinquent behaviours as expressed by secondary school students in Ibarapa Local Government Area, Oyo State. The study also examined the influence of variables such as gender, age and residential area on respondents’ expressions.
Descriptive survey design was adopted for the study. The using proportional, simple and stratified random sampling techniques were used to draw a sample of 200 secondary school students in Ibarapa Local Government Area, Oyo State. A self-designed instrument entitled “Patterns and Causes of Juvenile Delinquency Questionnaire (PCJDQ)” was used to amass data for the study. The instrument has reliability co-efficient of 0.72 through use of test re-test reliability method. The hypotheses were analyzed with t-test and Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) statistics at 0.05 level of significance.
The findings of this study revealed that the major patterns of juvenile delinquency among secondary schools in Ibarapa Local Government Area, are school violence, examination malpractice, bullying of other students, sexual immorality, involvement in graffiti behaviours and using abusive languages in school and public places. The findings also revealed that juvenile delinquency is caused by negative influence of mass media, unmet needs of adolescents, broken home, single parenting and peer pressure. The hypotheses tested revealed no significant difference in the patterns and causes of juvenile delinquency as expressed by secondary school students in Ibarapa Local Government Area on the bases of gender and age, while significant difference was found based on residential area.
Based on the findings of this study, it is recommended that parents and the society should provide for the needs of adolescents, the school authorities should monitor students’ activities and encourage them on the needs to associate with good peers, teachers should be role models for the students by demonstrating good behaviour to the students, government should regulate the activities of the media making appropriate laws to prevent adolescents’ exposure to delinquent acts, the school counsellors should organise seminars, workshops and symposia on regular basis in order to sensitise adolescents against delinquent behaviours and equip them with necessary social skills.