Juvenile Offenders: Characteristics and Reasons Why They Drop out of Regular Education, in Valparaiso Region

Abstract

In Chile, adult education has drastically transformed in recent decades, both in the curriculum reform and in the age of their students. Today, users of this education are no longer working adults who need to complete their studies to work, but they are mostly young teenagers who dropped out of regular education. The problem is that because their age they should be in the regular education, but they opt for adult education with teachers that are not prepared to deal with juvenile problems. This situation is even more complicated because adult education must receive young offenders because the Juvenile Criminal Responsibility Law establishes that they have to come back to school, but regular education has difficulties to accept them. However, they do not choose to come back to school and they have no motivation. This article presents the results of two quantitative researches conducted in 2008-2009 and in 2010-2011. These researches used random samples and together cover all the