Juvenile Delinquents

Juvenile Delinquents

Pamela Seldon

American Intercontinental University

ABSTRACT

Employing seriousness of offense as a measure of delinquency, we examine the family relationship of a one- parent home to a two parent home. We compare the situations of two individual with situations of delinquency life.

Dictionary.com tells us that the definition of a juvenile delinquent is a minor who cannot be controlled by parental authority and commits antisocial or criminal acts, as vandalism or violence. In breaking down the phrase, the term simply means an immature, undeveloped child who commits fault. The term juvenile delinquent is not gender based because “In 1998 adolescent girls accounted for one-fourth of juvenile arrest.” (www.myhyr.com/Program for Troubled Teen)

Whether we are discussing teen girls or teen boys, society would have us to believe that family relationships and environment define who and what we are. Regardless if a child is reared in, a single or two- parent home with loving or unemotional parents who work 12-hour days or 8-hour days it does not define the child. A juvenile delinquents environment does not always speak to who they are or who they will become. We draw your attention to the story of two teens whose life almost mirror one another’s

We begin with the tale of two adolescents, John and Erika. John raised by a single

working mother. Whom works two jobs to stay just too make ends meat. John is unsupervised

every day and receives very little love or attention “Imagine John, out with his friends on a

Saturday night. He smashes a shop window. We can see it in two ways. One way we can see

it is as a normal characteristic of young boisterous boys, an excusable characteristic, maybe

mischievous. If John happens to be coming from a respectable background, he is likely to be

let off with...