Juvenile Delinquency
There are many factors that have caused the juvenile delinquency rate to increase over the last 50 years. In 1997-1998, 53 percent of youth crimes were property related offences, 20 percent were charged with violent assault, and 27 percent were charged with minor crimes (Myths about Youth Crimes). Although the rate of youth crimes decreased in 1993, “violent crimes committed by youth…doubled between 1986 and 1992, rising faster than the adult violent crime rate” (The Progress of Canada's Children). Fortunately, Professor Peter Carrington, who studied juvenile crimes for 20 years, claims that the murder rates by youth have decreased significantly (Whitton); however, many common violent assaults are increasing. The common causes of youth crime are single parenting, poverty, social exclusion and homelessness.
One of the serious problems that causes youth crimes to increase is single parenting. In 1994, 61 percent of single parents worked outside of home, and their children, under 18, were unsupervised (The Progress of Canada's Children). Also, “Canada has no national child care system with set standards for fees and quality of services; as a result, the quality of regulated child-care programs is uneven across the country” (The Progress of Canada's Children). While they are working, many single parents cannot afford to pay for childcare to take care of
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their children, and they have difficulty finding relatives or friends to take care of their children because their relatives and friends may need to work as well (The Progress of Canada’s Children).
In addition to single parenting, poverty is the second reason that the youth crime rate has increased. Canada has the world’s second highest child poverty rate among industrialized countries; today, 40 percent of welfare recipients are children (The Progress of Canada's Children). Many young people are studying in school and are living with their parents, but their family economic background may vary. Some young people are living in a poor family, and their parents need to work arduously to support their families. Therefore, many youths are neglected by their parents, “The neglect includes a broad range of failures on the part of the parents to provide love, care, proper nurturing, values, discipline, and education” (Carrigan 283). Because many parents are too busy at work, they forget about their adolescent children’s basic needs. “The ‘dangerous hour’ for children and adolescents is the period between the close of school and bedtime. If nothing is provided for them [to do] during that time, they will often be led into bad company and mischievous activities” (Carrigan 309). When children have little or nothing to do in their spare time, and they are unsupervised, they may hang out with the wrong crowd of friends and may get involve with criminal activities such as drug trafficking and auto theft. If this degeneration into illegal activity occurs, their parents do not have the resources to control their children, who by this
