Crime and Delinquency among Slum Children of Dhaka City: A Sociological Study

Abstract

Bangladesh has experienced one of the highest urban population growth rates (around 7% per year) over the past three decades. Dhaka, the capital city, attracts approximately 320,000 migrants from rural areas every year. The city is unable to provide shelter, food, education, healthcare, and employment for its rapidly-expanding population. An estimated 3.4 million people live in the overcrowded slums of Dhaka, and many more live in public spaces lacking the most basic shelter. Overall condition of the slum of Dhaka city is the worst with minimum access to basic human rights. The society has to grapple with numerous social problems. Crime and delinquency among slum children is the societal problems experienced in the contemporary scenario. This refers to the phenomenon of slum children being active in criminal activities. This is a unique challenge since the individuals are below the stipulated age of adulthood. My study found various types of crimes and delinquencies among children of Rayer Bazar slum such as violence, theft, robbery, mugging, trafficking, drug addicting, drug dealing, sexual harassment etc. and they are also used by outsiders drug dealing, mugging, robbery etc. They involve to these crimes and delinquencies for various reasons such as social condition, poor parenting, delinquent peer, economic insecurity, lack of education, labeling delinquent self image etc.