Runaway Juveniles Are Not A Serious Problem

75% of youth in correctional facilities for delinquency are not in for a serious violent felony crime (Ross). Many minors in such facilities are held because their families cannot take care of them. Drug use, often stemming from the parents, is prevalent in teens detained in juvenile detention. Additionally, teen pregnancy and sexual abuse are common among the incarcerated young adults. Most of them have some level of a psychiatric disorder, however, a small percentage of them actually receive treatment. An unhealthy home environment, drug addiction, and mental trauma all contribute to the cycle of juvenile detention. In fact, 66% of youth who have been arrested will become repeat offenders within 24 months (“21 Juvenile Repeat Offenders

According to Gale, a document that interviewed David Doi about juvenile’s mental health states, “What we need is early assessment of young people who might have a mental illness, so kids who may be acting out in school, who may come from troubled homes. And there certainly could be services available for those young people even before they come in contact with the police.” The social environment of teens holds an enormous influence on how the teens act and behave. Teens are easily influenced by their surroundings and they look to others for guidance. Poor parenting also plays a big role why their children misbehave and become out of control. Parents rarely know what they are up to or what they are doing now in days. Parents need to be more involved in their children's lives to avoid them from misbehaving and making any unnecessary decisions that would put them in

Incidents like abuse from family members, bullying, neglect, and sexual abuse are the most common. Repeated abuse can lead to psychological damage and emotional scarring. Not only are traumatic psychological experiences causing these juveniles to commit violent crimes. Situations, where children have poor education, a household without discipline, peer pressure, inadequate role models, low income, and substance abuse coupled with the wrong environment, can lead to a life of crime. These negative influences guide these juveniles on the wrong path towards crime. However, it does not mean these juveniles cannot succeed; it is however up to the juvenile to make the correct choices in their

There has been an enormous amount of research, going back almost thirty years, about the relationship between childhood trauma, and juvenile delinquency. Many researches cannot say that there is a direct link between the two, but after much research, researches have found that childhood trauma can perhaps be a predictor for juveniles who later in life commit crimes. Trauma is defined as, “a disordered psychic or behavioral state resulting from severe mental or emotional stress or physical injury,” because the definition is broad and can range from a variety of different events, for the purpose of this paper, the focus will be on neglect trauma in juveniles (Trauma, 2016). Neglect according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services is, “the failure of a parent or other person with the responsibility for the child to provide needed food, clothing, shelter, medical care, or supervision such that the child’s health, safety and well-being are threatened with harm” (Kazemian, 2011).

So often parents tell their children, teenagers in particular, that not being willing to listen to them could lead to dire consequences. Most teens believe that parents are all talk and the consequences never really come, or least they are not that dire. Not true in Belen, New Mexico. A 16 year old boy kept stealing from his parents. They tried punishing him through various means, but to no avail. He just kept on stealing. In an article written by Lindsey Bever for the Washington Post Newspaper on yesterday, the parents decided to banish the teenager to the backyard in a tent for

An estimated amount of 1.6 million adolescents run away from home each year in the U.S alone.(Adolescence 266) Their parents maybe drug addicts or alcoholics, but most likely they are overbearing, controlling, authoritarian parents. The conflict is normally blamed upon the huge generation gap between parent and adolescent. The adolescent becomes increasingly, and dangerously distant. Research shows, that the minority of adolescents have a 20 percent -25 percent high conflict and majority is moderate or low conflict (Adolescence 263). How many times do you listen to your parent say “when I was young we weren’t allowed in the

Running away from home is one of the commonest juvenile offenses in America today. Children run to escape, to hide, to start a new life, to change their routine, or to follow a dream. There are 1.3 million juveniles that live on the street each day according to the National Runaway Switchboard (NRS). The statistics regarding the rates of juveniles in this country that runaway are surprising. Unfortunately with all of the children out on the street our system is not doing much to combat the problem. In most states running away is not illegal, which leaves law enforcement with few options when attempting to locate or recover a missing runaway child.

Since the late 1900’s incarceration rates have been rising constantly. Incarceration impacts other individuals that aren’t behind bars locked up in a cell. According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, 1.5 million minors deal with parental incarceration every year (Harrison & Beck, 2006).This project will investigate/ observe the effects of parental incarceration on male juveniles. Young juveniles of prisoners appear to suffer from the difficult living environments due to lack of guardianship leading them to commit crimes and violent offenses. The main focus of this project is to validate and observe the behavior of juveniles whose parents are incarcerated. There would be two control groups to be evaluated; Juveniles that haven’t had their parents incarcerated, and those who have been incarcerated throughout their lifetimes. This study will use data from the analysis conducted from the office of state courts administrator juvenile office risk. These children would be observed to analyze if any anti-social behavior is depicted. It is reasonable to predict that juveniles, whose parents have been incarcerated throughout their lifetime, will demonstrate acts of violence and illegal behaviors towards society. Prisoners’ children are more accessible to violence since no parental supervision is acquired when the parents are locked up.

“Since 1974 with the passage of the National Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act, programs have been established, by the juvenile justice system and child welfare system, to supplement short-term crisis intervention to runaway youth” (Rose, ND).

In the criminal justice world, juvenile offenders are of particular concern. In 2014 alone it is estimated that over one million juveniles were arrested in America (Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention). According to the National Institute of Justice, juveniles who begin a life of delinquency early are more likely to continue that trend into adulthood, and that once they enter the adult criminal justice system; they are more likely to become worse in their criminal conduct. While most juveniles are likely to stop delinquency by their early twenties, those who continue are more likely to engage in increasingly violent offenses. Maltreatment of juveniles is also a concern in America. In 2014, an estimated 700,000 children were referred to child welfare agencies across the United States.

Statistics show that the majority of the young people who offend often come from disadvantaged backgrounds, traumatic accidents, they can also be victims of domestic violence, homelessness and have mental health issues. According to the ACS Distance Education organisation (2015), there are many reasons why juveniles commit crime, but they almost all involve their surroundings and environment. Whether it is parental criminality, social alienation, school

Shown in figure 1, the higher percentage of Juvenile arrests were runaways. There are many reasons why juvenile runaway, for example; Arguments with family, feeling not being understood, feel distant to their families, doing bad in school , and don’t have anyone to lean on.

     Some causes for conduct in adolescents are no discipline, unstructured discipline and a broken home. A broken home is one of the factors that can produce a delinquent child. A broken home reduces the opportunity for creating a strong attachment between child and parents and that reduces the parent’s ability to condition the child. Many theories concerning the causes of juvenile crime focus either on the individual or on society as the major contributing influence. Theories centering on the individual suggest that children engage in criminal behavior because they were not sufficiently penalized for previous delinquent acts or that they have learned criminal behavior through interaction with others.

To begin with, Matchinda in (March 1999) wrote on the impact of home background on the decision of children to run away. This study brings to light the relationship between street children and their home background. The author has us understand that there has been an increase in the number of street children recently. Matchinda (1999) made it clear that disagreement and misunderstanding has been one of the principal factors that have strongly influenced children to run away from their homes.

Teen delinquency can also arise when a teen’s parent is incarcerated. Teens that have a parent in prison are affected emotionally, behaviorally and psychologically (Johnson 461). The incarceration of a parent can gravely affect an individual because the parent is not prevalent throughout the teen’s life. The teen then becomes angry and acts out because they have so much emotional pain bottled up inside. “The children of incarcerated parents are at a high risk for a number of negative behaviors that can lead to school failure, delinquency, and intergenerational incarceration” (Simmons 10). Teens with incarcerated parents lack the assistance of parental figures. In True Notebooks, Sister Janet says that the incarcerated teens never had anyone to lead them in the right path or show that adults care about them. She says that because of the lack of direction the teens never had the opportunity to do better for themselves (Salzman 26). There is also a major cycle that exists between incarcerated parents and their children that puts these teens at risk. On April 10th of 2008, a conference at Bryant University was held to discuss the concerning issues of teens with incarcerated parents. During the conference, Patricia Martinez, director of the Rhode Island Department of Children: Youth and families stated that “We want to break the cycle of intergenerational crime. I have heard of so many caseloads managing 18-year-olds who had a parent