Professionals' views on youth crime

The purpose of the study is to investigate how professionals view juvenile delinquency among young boys and girls. To carry out the study, a qualitative interview study with thematic analysis as the analysis method was used. The study had five interviewees who formed the study's data base and these people all had connections to social work and young people in juvenile delinquency. The study used a semi-structured interview as the interview method and where the interview questions were based on an interview guide. The theories that have been used to analyze the study's data base are Bronfenbrenner's developmental ecology model and Lipsky's theory of Grassroots Bureaucracy. In the results, there are various themes that will be discussed. Based on the themes that emerged, the young girls' exposure to prostitution and their path into gang crime was one of the most important contributions to this study. The professionals sees an increase in prostitution among young girls, which they also express concern about. Another theme that also stood out was that the professionals considered that gang crime was high among young people. Although gang crime is not a new phenomenon, it was considered important to portray it because it was a major problem based on the professionals' experiences. Other themes that appeared in the study were challenges but also areas for development. When it came to challenges, it was the increasing prostitution among young girls that worried one of the professionals in the interviews but also creating relationships with young people. Finally, what can be seen as the smallest theme was attitudes among young people, the professionals said that there were to some extent differences in attitudes between the sexes, and where boys could be perceived as nice while girls as arrogant and renunciative.