Law Enforcement Cannot Effectively Combat Juvenile Crime (From Juvenile Crime: Opposing Viewpoints, P 167-176, 1997, A E Sadler, ed. -- See NCJ-167319)

• NCJ Number: 167335
• Author(s): M Males; F Docuyanan
• Date Published: 1997
• Length: 10 pages
• Sale Source: Greenhaven Press
• Publication Type: Legislation/Policy Analysis
• Language: English
• Country: United States of America

Annotation

Punitive measures are ineffective and inappropriate in combatting juvenile crime, because they fail to address the problem of poverty, which is the underlying cause of juvenile crime.

Abstract

Today, State after State is imposing harsher penalties on juveniles who break the law. Rehabilitation and reintegration into the community are concepts that have already fallen out of fashion for adult criminals. Now they are fast becoming obsolete for juveniles. Instead of prevention and rehabilitation programs, more prisons are being built to warehouse juveniles along with adults. The trend began in California and is now sweeping the Nation. These policies virtually ignore the causes of juvenile crime, notably the growing opportunity gap between wealthier, older people and destitute, younger people. Los Angeles County is a clear illustration of this reality. Its per-capita income is much higher and its general poverty rate lower than the United States as a whole; its youth poverty rate is staggering: 200,000 impoverished adolescents live in the county. Los Angeles County is home to 1 in 15 juvenile murderers in the United States. Many criminal justice experts dismiss poverty as a cause of youth violence as they argue for more police and more prisons to counter juvenile crime. Instead of proposing more money for alleviating poverty or for crime prevention, they want more law enforcement at a cost of tens of billions of dollars. If more prisons and surer sentences were the solutions to crime and delinquency, California should be a safe haven for citizens, but it is still plagued by increasing crime. The most effective prevention effort by far is to raise fewer children in poverty. What is needed is a public-health strategy for the juvenile crime problem. This involves tracing the disease back to its source, which is the low social, educational, and economic status of the families and communities that produce violent youths. Programs to relieve these conditions include employment training and a variety of family services to reintegrate youths who have already been convicted. Such programs have proven to be more effective than law-enforcement approaches in preventing recidivism among delinquent youth as well as preventing younger members of their families from committing crimes.