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Juvenile delinquency or youth crime is rampant in many parts of the world. This rise has led to the formation of special prisons, juvenile detention centers, and special juvenile courts where these underage offenders are tried and taken for correctional programs. Over the last few decades, the number of minors aged below 18 years committing crime has risen significantly (Steinberg, 2008). Among the many reasons cited to have led to high the number of cases of juvenile offending is divorce and single parenthood. Bringing up a child as a single parent is not usually sufficient enough to help a child develop in all spheres of life. Areas of development that will be adversely affected are social and emotional development. While divorce sometimes seems as the best option in some marriages, without proper care and guidance, it can leave emotional scars in both the parents and children that may affect them for the rest of their lives. Such children will feel depressed, angry and will try to feed the anger by hurting others or fill the void left by the departed parent by engaging in crimes. This is unlike most children with both parents who are more emotionally stable hence chances of engaging in crime for such reasons are limited. Thus, there is a connection between single parenthood and juvenile delinquency.
A visit to any juvenile correction center will reveal a common but worrying trend: most of the minors held in these correctional centers come from single parent families. In the United States of America, approximately 70% of all juvenile delinquents in correctional centers have single parents (Steinberg, 2008). These statistics on the relationship between juvenile delinquency and single parenthood are so interlinked that are now almost synonymous. It is almost impossible to mention single parenthood without mentioning juvenile delinquency as its consequence. At the same time, when someone mentions juvenile delinquency the first causative factor that comes to mind is single parenthood. Like economist Jennifer Moore asserted, without a family comprising of a father and mother working diligently together in bringing up a child, the child would end up joining gangs and eventually juvenile correction centers as a prisoner (Morse, 2003). While punishing an offender is good, it has to be noted that the juvenile correctional centers which substitute parents, do not effectively bring behavior change. The void, anger and depression caused by divorce and/or living with one parent will always be there in most cases. These feelings will always linger somewhere at the back of the mind of the delinquent. Bringing up of a law-abiding child takes more than just the supervision which is the norm in prisons. Moreover, controlling a child’s activity using punishment like it is done in these prisons only works against the grain of good behavior development.
As divorce and single parenthood cases increase in our societies, the number of children growing up with anger and depression also rises. The effect of this is an increased number of minors committing crimes due to emotional problems. Good behavior is nurtured with loving tenderness that only a mother and a father living together can give. This is what is lacking in the juvenile correctional facilities. In conclusion, while criminals should be corrected or punished according to the law of the land, it is important to channel more efforts towards ways of building lasting marriages and giving proper guidance and counseling to children living with single parents.
References
Morse, J. (2003). Parents or Prisons. Policy Review, 120 (1), 49. Print.
Steinberg, L. (2008). Adolescence (8th ed.). New York: McGraw-Hill. Print.
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