Juvenile Delinquency

Children have been described as our future, our greatest resource, and our hope for a better tomorrow. For many Americans, though, children invoke fear. They represent violence, a segment of society lacking in self-control and devoid of ethics and morals, and the failure of the family to instill traditional values, top among them being the value of human life and respect for others.

Fear of crime, especially random violence perpetrated by young Americans, is among the nation's greatest concerns. It has served as the motivation for countless numbers of people to change their lifestyles, take self-defense classes, install home security systems, and carry handguns for protection. Moreover, fear of crime has influenced politicians and laypersons to adopt the position that a conservative justice system, which seeks to punish and deter, holds the most promise in curtailing juvenile crime.

Many theories concerning the causes of juvenile crime focus either on the individual or on society as the major contributing influence. Theories centering on the individual suggest that children engage in criminal behavior because they were not sufficiently penalized for previous delinquent acts or that they have learned criminal behavior through interaction with others. A person who becomes socially alienated may be more inclined to commit a criminal act.

Families have also experienced changes within the last 25 years. More families consist of one-parent households or two working parents. Consequently, children are likely to have less supervision at home than was common in the traditional family structure. This lack of parental supervision is thought to be an influence on juvenile crime rates. Other identifiable causes of delinquent acts include frustration or failure in school, the increased availability of drugs and alcohol, and the growing incidence of child abuse and child neglect. All these conditions tend to increase the probability of a child committing a criminal act, although a direct causal relationship has not yet been established

Most theories of juvenile delinquency have focused on children from disadvantaged families, ignoring the fact that children from affluent homes also commit crimes. The latter may commit crimes because of the lack of adequate parental control, delays in achieving adult status, and hedonistic tendencies. In some cases, when a child from an affluent background commits a crime it is more of a cry for attention than an actual act of criminality. All theories, however, are tentative and are subject to criticism. The imposition of these theories begs one to ask the questions of whether or not these should be used as an excuse for children who commit crimes.

Children's offenses typically include delinquent acts, which would be considered crimes if committed by adults. Waiving juveniles to criminal (adult) court and imposing criminal penalties, according to the conservative position, are effective ways for society to express outrage for the transgressions of "out-of-control" youth and to placate its desire for retribution. Others, however, contend that treating juveniles as adults is going too far. Although many of these juveniles are incarcerated for their crimes, which the law allows, they often are the easy victims of homosexual rape and other forms of violence at the hands of hardened adult criminals when placed in the adult jail setting.

In truth, the problem is not quite as pressing as it was a few years ago. With crime rates dropping, so is juvenile crime. The statistics of felonies committed by minors ballooned between the years of 1985 and 1995. During this time period, juvenile arrests for violent crimes rose 67%. This can be related to the sudden influx of armed gangs, and the rampant sale of crack cocaine. It is estimated that approximately 20% of all violent crimes are attributable to minors.

Some criminologists are also warning that a new wave of "superpredators" will soon hit the streets. Princeton professor John DiIulio invented the myth of the "juvenile superpredator" in the early 1990s, forecasting that 270,000 of these menaces to society will be out on the streets by 2010 (City Journal, Spring/96). The "superpredator" derives from age-based explanations of crime posited by DiIulio in league with other conservative academics.

Congress wants to make it easier to try juveniles accused of violent crimes as adults and to incarcerate them in adult prisons. States that want the federal dollars would have to make prosecutors and not judges the ones who decide whether a teenager charged with a serious violent felony or drug offense should be tried as an adult. To demonstrate that crimes really do carry punishments, states would also have to impose a rising scale of "graduated sanctions" for all juvenile offenses, beginning with the first, and keep adult-style criminal records on juvenile offenders. Under the present system, most such records are often sealed, meaning prosecutors can't learn whether an accused youth is a repeat offender.

Altogether, some 12,300 youths are prosecuted as adults each year in state courts. That is about 9% of all juveniles arrested for violent crimes and a 70% increase over the number who were tried as adults a decade ago. Those numbers are steadily climbing further perhaps proving that if the age was lowered we could skip a lot of this process. Child-welfare advocates say that would effectively dissolve the separate system of justice for kids that dates to 1899, when Chicago established the nation's first juvenile court.

Supporters say they corrected a problem created in 1974, when new legislation channeled nearly all young offenders to the juvenile system. What still isn't clear is whether moving young criminals back to adult courts has much impact on crime. The present-day controversy surrounding waivers appears to be a consequence of at least two factors converging. First, the definitions of childhood and age-appropriate behavior are in a state of flux. Young people are said to be more predisposed toward violence today than they were in the past. National crime data sources seem to support this notion. Violent juvenile crime has increased by nearly 70% since 1986. Moreover, the violence perpetrated by juveniles is portrayed by the mass media as being more heinous than at any other time in history. People are fearful of falling victim to a generation that seemingly holds beliefs and values that diverge drastically from those of normative society.

Second, the "get tough" approach to dealing with law violators (as seen throughout the criminal justice system) is increasingly being applied to juvenile offenders as well. Although a conservative approach to juvenile crime is not new, it is in sharp contrast to the