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On any given day you can not open up a newspaper or turn on a television
and not find an article or a broadcast about juveniles committing crimes, but the
question is who is to blame for the juvenile delinquency of our society and how does
the criminal justice system punish these crimes committed by our nation's youth?
Juvenile delinquency is a violation of the law by a juvenile not punishable by death
or life imprisonment. The government follows a policy that no crime goes
unpunished. The controversy that surrounds courtrooms today is whether or not a
juvenile should stand trial as an adult and be punished like an adult for committing
serious offenses. One side believes that juveniles should be punished according to the
severity of the crime in which they committed. The opposition believes that juveniles
are too young and immature to understand the consequences of what he or she had
did wrong. So the question is should juveniles be punished as children or punished
as adults?
There are many theories as to the cause of juvenile delinquency, including
one's economic background, substance abuse, delinquent peer groups, exposure to
violence, availability of firearms and media violence, and lack of parental control
over children (Kortege). 'It is ironic in America, today, one must have a driver's
license to operate a vehicle, a permit to own a gun and even a license to own a dog,
but one does not have to have parent training or a license in order to become a
parent' (Kortege). Problems that occur within the families of juvenile delinquents
include: divorce, women in the workplace which reduces the number of adults who
provide interaction, single parent families, step-parent families, lack of supervision,
parental rejection of the child, child rejection of the parent, and the conflict between
parents and teens...
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