Juvenile Truency and its Effects Essay - 798 Words

Juvenile Truancy For too many youngsters, cutting classes is the first slip down the icy slope toward delinquency. As early as 1915, sociologists were calling truancy the quot;kindergarten of crime.quot; A 1979 study of 258 adult re-offenders showed that 78% had been arrested for truancy, and two-thirds of the remainder admitted they had been chronically truant but were never arrested. (Gavin 1997) There is a sense that parents fear truancy as if it were an infectious disease that will strike their own kids if it isnt eradicated. In the book, Fear of Falling: The Inner Life of the Middle Class, Barbara Ehrenreich wrote that middle-class parents now see education as the only way they can help their youngsters†¦show more content†¦But tough talk will do little to help the kids who fail at school because of abuse at home. Youngsters who endure physical, emotional and sexual abuse at the hands of their parents may well face more of it if the parents are forced to pay fines or do jail time if the youngster cuts classes. Sometimes parents are not the only causation for truancy, A detective in Lansing, Michigan, who was investigating the chronic truancy of two adolescent girls, discovered that a 27-year-old man had lured them into spending time at his apartment during the day. And what of the youngsters who are bullied every day, forced to hand over their lunch money? We know how merciless kids can be when teasing those who are different - too tall, too short, too fat, too skinny, too light, too dark. Imagine kids that are gay, some who are taunted and attacked every day for being a quot;fag.quot; A Massachusetts Department of Education Youth Risk Behavior survey in 1997 showed that 22% of gay, lesbian and bisexual students reported skipping school because of safety concerns, compared to 4% of their peers. A U.S. Department of Health and Human Services report showed that 28% of gay and lesbian youth drop out of school because they do not feel comfortable there. ( Boston Public Schools 2000) Think what it must be like to sit in classes each day if you are unable to read. While statistics on theShow MoreRelated Adolescence and Juvenile Delinquency Essay1644 Words   |  7 PagesI couldnt begin to cover all the possible reasons that may cause an adolescent to become a juvenile delinquent. During my research, I found that the term juvenile delinquency is defined a number of ways. Mosbys Medical Nursing, and Allied Health Dictionary summed up juvenile delinquency best with this definition; resistant antisocial, illegal, or criminal behavior by children or adolescents to the degree that it cannot be controlled or corrected by the parents, endangers others in