Juvenile delinquent behavior is one of the most important issues we face as a nation in this new millennium. Despite the social awareness, juvenile delinquency is on the rise; case in point the tragic killing that occurred at Columbine High School in Colorado. This gives much cause for concern. Juvenile crime is increasingly more sophisticated and its participants are becoming younger. Gun violence has spread out from urban centers into suburbia. Drug and alcohol use among adolescents has reached epidemic proportions.
____How can we solve the problem of adolescent delinquent behavior? Many times the punishment for juvenile delinquency does not fit the crime. The issues surrounding juvenile delinquency today may well hinge on our understanding of how a teenager who commits crime thinks and behaves. How do we recognize criminal behavior in juveniles? It is possible that biological factors play a role in the criminal behavior of a juvenile offender. How can we even defend the theory of pure mind and physical body shape of adolescence to determine the factor that leads to delinquent behavior? How can we analyze the cause that relates to the delinquent act? It is likely, but no empirical data supports the belief that juveniles have biological inheritance that causes their delinquency. However, one may argue the fact that as adolescents go through stages of development, their physical shape tends to resemble that of other juvenile delinquents who, perhaps, have similar physical characteristics, and who might have been committing juvenile crimes. As a result, we tend to assume the probability that the next juvenile with the same physical shape will also be a juvenile delinquent. Although this is a possibility, it is an unlikely one. The quotation from Julius Caesar embodies a very old belief:
Is there a strong connection between abuse and delinquency? In most cases it is a very strong connection, you have the kids that were abused early and when they hit their teenage years lash out at adults some even start to abuse kids that was their age at the time they were being abused. Some join gangs sell drugs commit robberies and arson. Then you have the teens that were abused as children that handle things well that don’t lash out and move on with their life whether they seek counseling or not they grow to be loving teens focused on getting away from their abuser and not letting what happened to them as kids affect their life.
For the past few years, broken homes, a child’s family position, and family size have been the subjects of considerable study in the crime and delinquency field. In 1950, there were 40.5 million children living in homes containing both a father and a mother, and 4.1 million children living in broken homes. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, in 1970 there were 7.6 million minors (under eighteen years of age) growing up without one or both parents? In 1960, one of every four black families was headed by a woman who was divorced, separated from her husband, or abandoned. In 1972, almost one out of every three black families was without a father, compared to one in ten for whites. In this new millennium, the syndrome is no longer confined to low-income families or black families. Today’s middle class increasingly resembles the low-income family of the early 1960s. With the increase in such patterns as divorces (in 1996, one in every three marriages ended in divorce), separations and working mothers, children are increasingly being entrusted to daycare centers, neighbors, home alone and the television. Child-rearing patterns have, thus, undergone drastic changes. In an article on this issue, Sandra Pressmen notes that there are more and more young children with working mothers than ever before. 3 Many welfare-supported women with too many children in too many rooms have taken in neighbors children to supplement their income. At times these nannies have abused the children under their care. In 1999, a Chicago
