It is clear that the child’s mental, physical and psychological needs are not being met in his home environment. The traditional parental role is one of caregiver, role-model, and nurturer. When the father is absent from the home this causes a schism within the home that, if not filled properly, can contribute to the delinquency of a child. The child usually begins exhibiting behaviors such as lying, stealing, misbehaving in school, and fighting. If not checked these behaviors accelerate into anti-social behavior directed towards other children and the community.
Family Life and Juvenile Delinquency Researchers have established that there many paths to juvenile delinquency and numerous risk factors that contribute to a youth’s opportunity to offend. The environment in which a child is raised plays a very crucial role in predicting their behaviour in adolescence and subsequent, in adulthood. Delinquency and criminal behaviour typically begin in the home and continue into society. Many modern criminologists argue that youth’s who were deprived of parental warmth and affection had weak family and social bonds and tended to develop a set of beliefs that were negative and hostile towards society (Walsh, 1991). Furthermore, child maltreatment is a consequential social problem.
Juvenile crimes are one of the most common problems that have negative consequences on any community. Juvenile crimes refer to the crimes that are perpetrated by individuals who are under the adult age. Statistical analysis indicated that this number grows daily. This has triggered the government to seek intervention measures to help reduce the increasing trend and hence safeguard the society against future offending. This because such children who have records of crime develop to become uncontrollable gangs in the society.
Juvenile Crime Statistics After a decade of growth, the incidence of violent crime in America suddenly began to drop in the mid-1990s. Criminologists propose various reasons for the sudden turnaround in violent crime. Explanations include a strong economy, changing demographics, changes in the market for illegal drugs and the use of firearms, expanded imprisonment, policing innovations, and a growing cultural intolerance for violent behavior. Regardless of which explanation one favors, it is clear that previous increases as well as recent decreases in violent crime were disproportionately generated by the nation’s youth. Criminal behavior has always been more prevalent among young people.
It also affects the relationship with other family members. Kids often distance themselves from everyone and do not include themselves in family activities. They feel no one could possible understand what they are going through. When it comes down to a relationship with the opposite sex, trust is often a big issue. Children many times also seek out a significant other that reminds them of their incarcerated parent to fill that void.
Also how the alcoholic home has affects extended family members that are not in the home. The extended family members sometimes are forced to sit back and watch the dysfunction often not being able to do anything. I think it’s important to recognize that the extended family members also feel hopeless and confused. Using this information along with my own experiences as an adult child will help me to understand better how others deal with their childhoods. It is also important to know for prevention as well.
The link between a broken home and delinquency are strongly believed. Much controversy resides in what is thought to be a broken home and what defines a family. Many different definitions fit these words. It just seems logically to conclude that a broken home leads to delinquent acts. A broken home can result in economic hardships, loss of some affection, adequate supervision that is provided by two parents, and easier chance to develop relationships with delinquents.
There are many reasons to prevent juveniles from becoming delinquents or from continuing to engage in delinquent behavior. The most obvious reason is that delinquency puts a youth at risk for drug use and dependency, school drop-out, incarceration, injury, early pregnancy, and adult criminality. Saving youth from delinquency saves them from wasted lives. Juvenile justice systems in the United States have long struggled with the inherent tension between their role in meting out punishment for violations of law and their role as an authoritative force for bringing about constructive behavior change in the wayward youth who commit those violations. Every single person living in the United States today is affected by juvenile crime.
However, when a child engages in criminal activity the degree of the sentence received should coincide with offense .The central emphasis of this content is to illustrate the effects of retribution by holding the juvenile justice system responsible for precisely applying the appropriate sanctions toward deserving individuals. All through history, mischievous children who have gotten in trouble have been confronted with extreme reprimands. Over the last twenty years juvenile violent crime has escalated almost twice as quickly as that of adults. The rate at which juveniles were arrested for violent crimes rose 79 percent between 1978 and 1993, almost three times the increase over that time period for adults. The legal term juvenile delinquent was generated so that young offenders could steer clear of the humiliation of being labeled in officially authorized court documents as criminals.
‘Widely publicized school shootings during the late 1990’s and early years of the twenty-first century have raised public concerns about rising adolescent violence and created the perception that juvenile delinquency is increasing.’ Statistics shows that juvenile crime rates are actually declining. In 2001, the total number of juvenile arrests was 2.3 million—a figure 4 percent below the total for 2000 and 20 percent below the 1997 total….. However this is a situation that evolved over the years and has not been dealt with appropriately and it can lead to murder, burglary, suicide, school dropout and a state of depression as well. I strongly agree that juvenile delinquency is most prominent in the secondary educational system and it can hamper the child’s ability to learn and it can also cause a nervous breakdown of the child’s nervous system. The three major factors in the secondary educational system that contribute to juvenile delinquency are single parent families, delinquent peers and the mass media.