Juvenile Crime Essay, Research Paper

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Juvenile Criminals

This newest phenomenon in the world of crime is perhaps the most dangerous challenge

facing society and law enforcement ever. They are younger, more brutal, and completely

unafraid of the law. Violent teenage criminals are increasingly vicious. Young people, often

from broken homes or so-called dysfunctional families, who commit murder, rape, robbery,

kidnapping, and other violent acts. These emotionally damaged young people, often are the

products of sexual or physical abuse. They live in an aimless and violent present and have no

sense of the past and no hope for the future. These young criminals commit unspeakably brutal

crimes against other people, often to gratify whatever urges or desires drive them at the moment

and their utter lack of remorse is shocking (Worsham 1997).

Studies reveal that the major cause of violent crime is not poverty but family breakdown;

specifically, the absence of a father in the household. Today, one-fourth of all the children in the

United States are living in fatherless homes which adds up to 19 million children without fathers.

Compared to children in two parent family homes, these children will be twice as likely to drop

out of school, twice as likely to have children out of wedlock, and they stand more than three

times the chance of ending up in poverty, and almost ten times more likely to commit violent

crime and ending up in jail (Easton 1995). The Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank,

reported that the rise in violent crime over the past 30 years runs directly parallel to the rise in

fatherless families. In every state in our country, according to the Heritage foundation, the rate

for juvenile crime is closely linked to the percentage of children raised in single-parent families.

While it has long been thought that poverty is the primary cause of crime, the facts simply do not

support this view. Teenage criminal behavior has its roots in habitual deprivation of parental

love and affection going back to early infancy, according to the Heritage Foundation. A father’s

attention to his son has enormous positive effects on a boy’s emotional and social development.

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But a boy abandoned by his father is deprived of a deep sense of personal security. In a

well-functioning family the very presence of the father embodies authority and this paternal

authority is critical to the prevention of psychopathology and delinquency . “The overwhelming

common factor that can be isolated in determining whether young people will be criminal in their

behavior is moral poverty,” Parker says (Parker 1996).

Psychologists can predict by the age of 6 who’ll be the super-predators. According to

experts, child abuse and parents addicted to alcohol ruins these children?s lives. Each generation

of crime-prone boys has been about three times as dangerous as the one before it. Psychologists

believe the downhill slide into utter moral bankruptcy is about to speed up because each

generation of youth criminals is growing up in more extreme conditions of “moral poverty” than

the one before it. Moral poverty is defined as “growing up surrounded by deviant, delinquent, and

criminal adults in abusive, violence-ridden, fatherless, godless, and jobless settings.

The “super-predator” is a breed of criminal so dangerous that even the older inmates

working their way through life sentences complain that their youthful counterparts are out of

control. Super predators are raised in homes void of loving, capable, responsible adults who

teach you right from wrong. It is the poverty of being without parents, guardians, relatives,

friends, teachers, coaches, clergy and others who habituate you to feel joy at others’ joy, pain at

others’ pain, happiness when you do right, remorse when you do wrong. It is the poverty of

growing up in the virtual absence of people who teach these lessons by their own everyday

example, and who insist that you follow suit and behave accordingly (Zoglin 1996). ?The need

to rebuild and resurrect the civil society (families, churches, community groups) of high-crime,

drug-plagued urban neighborhoods is not an intellectual or research hypothesis that requires

testing. It’s a moral and social imperative that requires doing – and doing now (Duin 1996).?

A super predator is actually a young psychopath or psychotic, almost completely without

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ambition, and are often of below average intelligence. They do not recognize, intellectually or

otherwise, any rules of society. While psychopaths and the super-predator both share the inability

to feel emotion, the psychopath can feign it to achieve a result. The super predator seems

completely incapable of even that. More interestingly, the super predator is remarkably candid.

They will more often than not admit not only to their crimes, but also as to the why. They feel as

if nothing wrong was done and would do it again if placed in the same situation.

When asked what was triggering the explosion of violence among today’s young street

criminals, a group of life-term New Jersey prisoners did not voice the conventional explanations

such as economic poverty or joblessness. Instead, these hardened men cited the absence of people

- family, adults, teachers, preachers, coaches who would care enough about young males to

nurture and discipline them (Zoglin 1996). Even more shocking than the sheer volume of violent

juvenile crime is the brutality of the crime committed for trivial motives: a pair of sneakers, a

jacket, a real or imagined insult, and a momentary cheap thrill. For example: a 59-year-old man

out on a morning stroll in Lake Tahoe was fatally shot four times by teenagers “looking for

someone to scare.” The police say the four teenagers, just 15 and 16 years old, were “thrill

shooting.” Another example can be the case of a 12-year-old and two other youths were charged

with kidnapping a 57-year-old man and taking a joy ride in his Toyota. As the man pleaded for

his life, the juveniles shot him to death (Duin 1996).

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1. Duin, Julia ?Alarm over crime puts focus on our nation’s moral crisis?., The Washington

Times, 11-17-1996, pp 31.

2. Easton, Nina J ?The Crime Doctor Is In; But Not Everyone Likes Professor. JohnDiIulio’s

Message,? There Is No Big Fix; Home Edition., Los Angeles Times,

05-02-1995, pp E-1.

3. Parker, Shafer, Violence With a Youthful Face.., Vol. 23, Alberta Report /Western Report,

06-17-1996, pp 27.

4. Richard Zoglin Reported By Sam Allis/Boston And Ratu Kamlani, ?New York, Crime:

Now For the Bad News: A Teenage Time Bomb ?, TIME, 01-15-1996, pp 52+.

5. Worsham, James-Blakely, Stephen-al, et, Crime and Drugs., Vol. 85, Nation’s Business,

02-01-1997, pp 24.