Prevention Of Minors Delinquent Behavior In Activities Of The Internal Affairs Officers

Abstract

The article reveals the features of the work of police officers with delinquent adolescents and minors in modern sociocultural conditions, as well as the process of formation of readiness of Internal Affairs officers for preventive activities with this category of minors. The article deals with the main issues involving the pedagogical activity of Law Enforcement officers related to the prevention of juvenile delinquency, crime and other unlawful acts. The article considers the social and educational activities of Internal Affairs officers in relation to juvenile offenders and children at risk. The term "delinquent behavior" is defined in more detail and the terms "delinquent behavior" and "deviant behavior" are differentiated. The pedagogical model of readiness of police officers for preventive activities with minors of delinquent behavior is developed, proved and verified. The general methodological basis of the research is constituted by the provisions of modern science on the unity, universal connection and causality of the phenomena of the world, on the process of cognition and harmonious development of personality, on the systematic approach to the study of pedagogical phenomena, personal-activity approach to the process of specialist training. The results allow to make conclusions that the objectives of the study to improve the pedagogical training of the Internal Affairs officers for working with minors can be resolved in the conditions of the educational process in accordance with the structural and functional model, taking into account the peculiarities of adult education and the specifics of the functioning of continuing education institutions.

Keywords: Case studydelinquent behaviorminorspolice officersprevention

Introduction

There can be no society in modern conditions in which all its members would behave in accordance with the general regulatory requirements. When a person violates norms, rules of behavior, laws, his/her behavior is called deviant, delinquent, criminal, etc., depending on the nature of the violation. Such deviations are very diverse and have different forms of manifestation. Special attention should be paid to the manifestation of such behavior in children.

Prevention of juvenile delinquency is one of the most important areas of preventive activity of the Internal Affairs Bodies. The delinquent behavior of adolescents not only affects ordinary crime record at the present time, but also largely determines the crime record of the future, therefore special attention should be paid to the correct choice of the organization of this work.

The analysis of statistical data on the committed unlawful acts in Russia showed that during the last 7 years in the territory of the Russian Federation a dynamics of decrease in level of teenage crime is observed, while in the Republic of Bashkortostan, on the contrary, we can see a dynamics of increase in level of crime among minors (Doklad o rezultatakh i osnovnykh napravleniyakh deyatelnosti MVD RF v 2018 godu, 2018). In this case, minors are more likely to commit serious and particularly serious offenses. According to a survey of the staff of the Temporary Detention Centre for Juvenile Offenders of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Republic of Bashkortostan (hereinafter - Centre), children of a younger age group (primary school) are increasingly being placed in the Centre and there is even a practice of placing preschool children in the Centre which did not happen previously.

The abovementioned data clearly show that persons of minor age with manifestations of delinquent behavior require a set of preventive measures to be taken against them. Every second crime committed by a minor is committed by a secondary school student who is registered in the Police Commissioners Department and Juvenile Police of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Russia. The result is that today there is a social request for training of Internal Affairs Police officers in the specialty "lawyer-teacher", "lawyer-educator" (Professiya «Inspektor po delam nesovershennoletnih», 2018). Speaking about the preventive activities of police officers, we consider not only the activities of Juvenile Police officers of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Russia, but also police investigators, the activities of the Police Commissioners, and employees of the Temporary Detention Centre for Juvenile Offenders. In this scientific research we consider the above categories of employees of Law Enforcement as 20% of the contingent with whom these police officers are to interact, are minors with vivid manifestations of delinquent behavior. For example, the cases of minors leaving home are increasing in the Republic of Bashkortostan. As a rule, tracing, detection and arrest of such person is carried out by a criminal investigation officer, further this person is interrogated by an investigator or by a person conducting an initial inquiry. Accordingly, initial psychological contact should be established by these officers, which is not always possible without the presence of a member of the Juvenile Unit. Moreover, the inability to establish trust relations with delinquent minors lead to cases of bringing police officers to criminal responsibility for the use of special means or physical force against minors, which is unacceptable by Russian legislation (Police Department No. 1 of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Russia in the city of Ufa, 2015, similar cases were recorded on the territory of the Republic of Bashkortostan both in 2016 - 2017 and earlier). Criminologists say that from 1/2 to 3/5 of teenagers who had committed crimes were outside the professional attention of authorities of early prevention (Paatova, Begidova, & Hakunov, 2012). We would also like to note the work of temporary detention centres for juvenile offenders at the Ministry of Internal Affairs in the Republic of Bashkortostan. Nowadays, minors placed in this institution on the basis of a court verdict can be there up to 30 days. It is not uncommon for the same minor to be placed there more than once, and the total period of their detention may be up to six months. At the same time, preventive activity with this category of minors is performed only through carrying out preventive conversations. Educational activity with such minors is not provided, classes with professional teachers on the educational programme are not conducted. Minors who are in temporary detention centres for juvenile offenders study by themselves, without the participation of qualified teachers of educational institutions. Later when they return to the society (school), they are lagging behind the educational programme, which makes them reject and feel reluctant to continue their education. It then contributes to the manifestation of delinquent behavior in these adolescents. These facts indicate that there is an urgent need for professionalization of police officers in the field of work with children. The problem of professional training of police officers is due to the growing criminal destructiveness of minors, the lack of innovative approaches to implementing preventive practices, the quality of police units caused by high staff turnover (55.8% of juvenile inspectors work for the first year, 20.3% of employees have a general secondary education). The lack of special training does not allow them, as we pointed out earlier, to effectively realize the preventive potential of the internal affairs bodies.

At the socio-educational level, the relevance of the study is due to both the needs of modern Russian society and the changed requirements of the state to the employees of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Russian Federation.

At the scientific and methodological level, the relevance of the study is connected with the need to develop a model identifying a set of pedagogical conditions that contribute to the formation of professional readiness of Internal Affairs bodies officers in the system of training when working with delinquent minors.The relevance of the problem under consideration served as the basis for choosing the research topic - "Formation of Readiness of Police Officers to Prevent Delinquent Behavior of Minors".

The object of the study is the process of formation of Internal Affairs officers’ readiness to prevent delinquent behavior of minors.

Problem Statement

During the research we set the following goals:

  • To clarify the definition of the "delinquent behavior" term; to reveal the essence, structure and features of delinquent behavior of minors.

  • To analyze the content of traditional special initial training of police officers in the field of work with minors, the content of their real preventive activity with minors of delinquent behavior.

  • To reveal pedagogical conditions of preparation of police officers for preventive activity with delinquent minors in the system of advanced training.

  • To develop, substantiate and test the pedagogical model of police officers’ readiness for preventive activity with minors of delinquent behavior.

Research Questions

In the course of our research, we have raised the following questions: will the process of formation of professional readiness of police officers to work with delinquent minors be more effective if:

  • the factors and conditions causing the formation of delinquency among minors in modern conditions of society development are distinguished;

  • the content of the process of formation of police officers’ professional readiness to work with minors of delinquent behavior is revealed;

  • the model of formation of police officers’ professional readiness to work with minors of delinquent behavior in which specifics of this age category is considered is developed.

Purpose of the Study

The purpose is to theoretically substantiate the pedagogical conditions of training and experimentally test the pedagogical model of readiness of police officers to prevent delinquent behavior of minors.

Research Methods

Theoretical methods (historical-comparative, comparative, modeling); empirical methods (observation, questioning, expert evaluation, study of documents and normative legal acts of the Russian Federation, generalization of socio-educational experience, experimental work), interviewing police officers, retired police officers, officers of other departments of the Law Enforcement system, statistical and analytical processing of the results. The general methodological basis of the research is constituted by the provisions of modern science on the unity, universal connection and causality of the phenomena of the world, on the process of cognition and harmonious development of personality, on the systematic approach to the study of pedagogical phenomena, personal-activity approach to the process of training a specialist. The theoretical basis of the study was developed by the ideas and concepts of the essence and nature of human, the interaction of human and society (K.  Abulkhanova-Slavskaya, S. Rubinstein, E. Fromm, etc.); the system of social structures in society, their relationship and mutual influence (I.. Ilyinsky, V.. Lisovsky, P. Litvak, G.. Polunina, V.. Frolov, etc.); the theory of teachers training (I. Isaev, E. Klimov, V. Kuzovlev, N. Kuzmina, A. Markova, I. Pleteneva, V. Slastenin, etc.); research on the problems of socio-educational activity (V. Bocharova, A. Mudrik, V. Nikitin, G. Filonov, V. Fokin, etc.); theory of prevention and overcoming deviant behavior of adolescents (A. Makarenko, V. Soroka-Rossinsky, S. Shatsky, etc.); works of researchers of deviant behavior (E. Arkin, A. Belkin, A. Kochetov, P. Lublinsky, A. Makarenko, G. Minkovsky, V. Sukhomlinsky, S. Shatsky, etc.); law enforcement (I. Samoshchenko, N. Alexandrov, S. Alekseev, etc.); classification of subjects of prevention (A. Alekseev, N. Vetrov, A. Dolgov, K. Igoshev, G. Minkovsky).

Findings

A significant role in the origin of delinquent behavior is played by a micro-social situation: asocial and anti-social environment (parents' alcoholism, asocial and antisocial family or company); abandonment (Shcheglova, 2009); large and single-parent family; family conflicts; chronic conflicts with other significant people.

The tendency to delinquent behavior can manifest itself in various social deviations - from violations of morality, minor offenses to serious crimes (Pristanskaya, 1999). The main forms of delinquent behavior include:

  • drunkenness and alcoholism;

  • drug addiction;

  • suicide;

  • prostitution;

  • vagrancy;

  • petty theft;

  • verbal and physical abuse.

Despite the fact that the term "delinquent behavior" is widely used in foreign literature since the mid-twentieth century, currently, there is no one and only approach to understanding of this term in Russian criminological, psychological and pedagogical literature. There are a number of terms, similar in meaning and content, but defined differently.

The concept of delinquent behavior was proposed by J. Bennet in 1960. This term is widely reflected in foreign literature, describing the duty, psychological inclination, "psychological tendency to offense" (L. Dodder, H. Kaplan, F. Regdi, F. Feldman, B. Sheldon, etc.) (Zmanovskaya, 2003). The authors of scientific works are mostly divided into two categories: the first group understands delinquent behavior as criminal behavior, the second group - as illegal actions, offenses excluding criminal acts (administrative offenses, and other manifestations of delinquent behavior excluding crimes).

In modern Western (English-language) literature, the term "delinquency" is often used in combination with "youthful" and means actions committed by young people in violation of any laws (Gordeeva, 2005). In the Russian scientific literature, delinquent behavior is also often considered as a social activity associated with the violation of norms that entail criminal punishment (Unarova, 2000).

Thus, The Large Law dictionary gives the term "delinquent" the following definition: (from lat. delinquens - someone who is commiting misdemeanor), the offender; in law term used to refer to individuals with socially deviant behavior (criminals etc.) (Dodonov, Ermakov, & Krylova, 2001).

Another definition of the term "delinquent" is given in the Great Soviet Encyclopedia: (from lat. delinquens, delinquentis - someone who is committing misdemeanor), in Anglo-American law, it is a person who failed to fulfill his or her obligations, committed violation, crime, etc. - hence the terms: delinquency (violation or crime), delinquent (unfulfilled obligation, such as an unpaid in time tax) (Larionova, 2013). In English law and administrative and judicial practice, D. refers to minors whose behavior necessitates the use of various corrective measures provided for by criminal law or special legislation on youth (including their placement in closed educational institutions). N. Smelser, V. Fox consider delinquent behavior to be a type of socially unacceptable behavior, which includes two types of deviations from the norm: the first type is asocial, the second is antisocial (Vasyagina, 2018). Asocial behavior is the result of the failure of socialization and cultural education of a person in early childhood (A. Cohen, R. Merton, R. Clark) (as cited in Nosova & Filippov, 2018). Many authors think, that antisocial behavior is a higher type of asocial behavior, as its derivative (Trus, 2002). Thus, they demonstrate a close relationship between deviant, delinquent, and criminal behavior. In the scientific literature, the term delinquent behavior is often replaced by the term “deviant behavior”, which is not true, since “deviant behavior” is correlated with the term “delinquent behavior” as general to particular, where the term “deviant behavior” covers the term “delinquent behavior”, and delinquent behavior is a part and one of the manifestations of deviant behavior. Thus, any behavior that is not approved by public opinion is called deviant, and behavior that is not approved by law (other than criminal) is delinquent.

Currently, there is no one and only approach to the study and explanation of deviant behavior. A number of researchers, following E. Durkheim, believe that under normal conditions of functioning of a social organization, deviant behavior is not so common, but in conditions of social disorganization, when normative control weakens, the likelihood of manifestation of deviation increases. Such situations include stress, intra-group and inter-group conflicts, and drastic changes in the society.

The study of the key categories that make up the concepts of deviant behavior, delinquent behavior, indicates its specificity, manifested in various classifications, approaches, characteristics of deviant and delinquent behavior (Krivonos, 2018). Based on a comparison of philosophical, sociological, psychological and pedagogical aspects, the concept of “delinquent behavior” can be interpreted as negative and unapproved acts or actions (inaction) that do not correspond to or contradict the norms or rules of behavior officially set or established in the society and the state norms, rules of behavior, which are expressed in offenses, misdemeanors and (or) other acts not related to criminal. The structure of pedagogical readiness of Internal Affairs Bodies officers to work with minors includes motivational, cognitive and operational components.

The criteria for the level of pedagogical readiness of the employees of Internal Affairs officers to work with minors are:

a) a motivational criterion with following indicators:

- internal sustainable motives for working with minors;

- understanding of the need to protect the child in an unfavorable situation and his or her rehabilitation;

b) cognitive criterion with following indicators:

- knowledge of modern experience of officers of internal affairs bodies of other countries working with juvenile offenders;

- knowledge of the theory and technology of education and re-education of minors, juvenile technologies;

- knowledge of the psychological and age characteristics of minors;

c) operational criterion with following indicators:

- knowledge of pedagogical and juvenile technologies;

- ability to communicate with minors.

The main methods and forms of work are individual preventive activities, which, first of all, consists in monitoring and accounting for dysfunctional families as a permanent environment for the emergence of such kind of social excesses. In the framework of such activities, individual work of police inspectors is supposed to be held both with the minors themselves and with their parents or legal representatives, that is, with their immediate social environment. In addition to individual conversations, this also includes activities to transfer relevant information to local authorities, overseeing certain adolescents and children in terms of providing them with necessary medical care, ensuring the conditions for their adequate training and education, possible initial and preparatory measures for the potential removal of children from dysfunctional families. This certainly includes activities related to the organization of various kinds of events that promote legitimate and legal behavior in this dysfunctional or potentially dysfunctional environment, for example, lectures in educational organizations or an attempt to influence through the media, promoting a healthy lifestyle, sports, etc.

Police officers, working in this field, are obliged to study the child’s personality, identifying potential offenders, analyzing and cutting off access to them of various kinds of harmful sources of negative influence. Here, the risk groups include persons already detained for offenses of the most diverse types, conditionally convicted, returning from educational and other educational institutions, leading an obvious antisocial lifestyle. In order to control the situation, it is necessary to control the data of the “risk group”, to register potentially dangerous social elements and carry out special individual work with them, while, of course, in every possible way interacting with other units, authorities and other public and state structures. It is worth noting that such work should be carried out taking into account the features of the psyche of a child or adolescent that has not formed yet. It imposes a huge responsibility on the nature and form of the measures applied. It should be noted that police officers are engaged in this activity, based primarily on the legal education and re-education of the individual, and the promotion of moral and ethical guidelines in their behavior (Gordeeva, 2005).

The police officers operating in this area are certainly required to systematically improve their professional skills, increasing their competence in the competent resolution of such issues (Shcheglova, 2009). It seems logical to improve the system of training beginners and retraining already highly qualified staff with appropriate education and work experience. Moreover, such an opportunity is provided within the framework of modern Russian higher education, for example, the areas of "Social Work", "Social Pedagogy" and much more.

Conclusion

To sum it up, we should say that crime prevention activities in the youth environment in the Russian Federation are carried out in the most active way, however, the primary goal facing both the state and society should be, the elimination of the causes of such violations on a macro level, which includes the social, economic, political, spiritual spheres and their functioning, in general, and only then the elimination and leveling of the causes.

Thus, the following pedagogical conditions ensure the improvement of the pedagogical training of officers of internal affairs bodies for working with minors in the continuing education system:

- organization of the educational process in accordance with the structural-functional model, taking into account the peculiarities of adult education and the specifics of the institution of continuing education functioning.

- integration of the content of all curriculum cycles, and mainstreaming of the pedagogical component in them;

- ensuring the interconnection of the process of training police officers in the system of professional development and practical work of Internal Affairs officers with minors.

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Publication Date

15 November 2020

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European Publisher

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93

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Teacher, teacher training, teaching skills, teaching techniques, special education, children with special needs, computer-aided learning (CAL)

Cite this article as:

Nosova, D., Nosov, I., Filippov, N., & Bikkinin, I. (2020). Prevention Of Minors Delinquent Behavior In Activities Of The Internal Affairs Officers. In I. Murzina (Ed.), Humanistic Practice in Education in a Postmodern Age, vol 93. European Proceedings of Social and Behavioural Sciences (pp. 791-798). European Publisher. https://doi.org/10.15405/epsbs.2020.11.81