Juvenile Delinquency

With the apparent rise in juvenile delinquency as stated in Juvenile crime: opposing viewpoints, (Bender & Leone, 1997, p.107), parents should be held accountable for the criminal actions of their children. However, under rare occasions, the delinquent, not the parent is completely responsible for their own actions. In most cases juveniles should be held accountable as an adult. Parents are the basis for the development of youth, and if all is not well in the home then that child is more at risk of becoming a delinquent. Most problems stem back to the home and the parenting.

“In order to protect society from the more serious, violent crimes committed by some of today’s juveniles, critics of the system assert, stronger punishments are required than those meted out by the juvenile courts “(Bender & Leone, 1997, p.13). If the children of today were raised in stable homes with the correct and upstanding parenting then most likely they would not be committing such awful crimes. Bob Dole once stated and was quoted in Juvenile crime: opposing viewpoints, “A violent teenager who commits an adult crime should be treated as an adult in court and should receive adult punishment,” (Bender & Leone, 1997, p. 12). Kids coming from morally corrupt homes have increased likelihood to go down the road of delinquency. They will do whatever they please and we will not be able to change them, especially in the judicial setting if it is not changed in the home setting first. “Until we deal with the environment in which kids live, whatever we do in the courts is irrelevant.”(Bender & Leone, 1997, p. 22)

The absence of parenting and a stable home life is one huge factor that leads to juvenile delinquency. If we have parents pleading to judges in the court room like the one we see here, “and they (the parents) were asking me (the judge), �what are you going to do to control our children.’” (Bender &Leone, 1997, p. 108), what does that show? It shows that the parents first need to learn how to raise their child; if the child is not raised correctly it is not the court’s fault.

“Most of us were blessed to be born to loving responsible parents. And most of us were lucky enough to have other adults in our lives who reinforced the moral lessons that we learned at home… But some