Younger Punks
Pre-teens Committing Felonies
By Daniel Muniz

Pre-teen children and teenagers under the age of 15 are responsible for only a tiny portion of crime. For violent crime, it hovers at five percent. It inches up to seven percent for robberies and peaks at nine percent for burglaries. Those are national figures but there are some municipalities where it is out of control.

Daytona Beach in Florida is one such example.

The crime rate for this tourist Mecca is twice the average for Florida but what is disturbing is how young some of the kids are who are committing the felonies; many under ten years old and as young as seven.

Because of this alarming trend, the police chief ordered truancy sweeps in which kids that were skipping school were apprehended and fingerprinted. And after running those prints through a national crime database administered by the FBI, it came to no surprise that most of the truants played a big part of the crime wave.

But what should a local community do when so many pre-teens are stealing cars, burglarizing homes and businesses, and even brazenly committing armed robberies?

The natural reaction is to blame the parent.

However, teachers from dropout factories (high schools in which more than fifty percent of freshman students do not graduate in four years) are more than happy to give the public a brutal education about the facts of life. From their personal experiences there often is no parent.

There may somebody that a kid is living with, like a grandparent, second or third cousin, aunt, or uncle but he or she is only providing the child with a place to live in. Their parental role and oversight in these kinds of homes may be limited at best but oftentimes it is practically non-existent. As a result, such children may very well be living in an environment where there are no boundaries or rules to adhere to. And sadly, there is no value system of any kind that is being taught to them from their “more or less” legal guardians.

And for the ones that do live with a biological parent, there may not be any kind of family structure in place. So in other words, a child is free to do whatever he or she desires without any repercussions. That can include staying out for all hours of the night including on school days, skipping school, engaging in drug use, etc. There is no parental influence because the adults themselves may not be mature enough to comprehend what exactly their parental roles ought to be, especially if they are still partying or making bad decisions and using poor judgment.

Overall, teachers from dropout factories are very much disturbed to discover that although there is an adult overseeing a child, that person may have little to no concern about their welfare (skipping school, flunking out, going to jail, etc). Or even worse, some have given up trying to shape the behavior of these children.

One solution is a knee-jerk reaction to this growing problem is that more government funding is needed for social programs that help keep these kids off the streets while preventing them from resorting to unacceptable behavior.

Mike Chitwood, the chief of police for Daytona Beach, insists:

“I've got 8-, 9-, 10-, 11-year-olds committing burglary and stealing cars now. What are they going to be doing when they're 21? Hey, either you pay when they go to state or federal prison, or you're going to clean the crap up now. But somewhere along the line you are going to pay.”

Source: CNN.com

What poverty warriors and community activists tend to overlook is the breakdown of the family as being the source of these kinds of problems. All the government funding in the world is not going to replace the structure, boundaries, and rules that only parents can provide. There are some programs that can be helpful but even many social workers admit that what these kids really need is one-on-one personal time and interaction with a responsible adult.

So correct me if I am wrong but isn’t that what a parent is supposed to already do?

And even if these social programs have their budgets enormously inflated, they still cannot replace the role of responsible parents. The most ardent proponents of the nanny state vehemently disagree because they feel that the government can solve all of society’s problems provided that they are adequately funded. In essence, it is a mentality that “it takes a village to raise a child” with the village being the government.

It’s just not that easy. I do not disagree that there are certain worthwhile social programs that can help reach some of these children and that they should be properly funded. However, for the future thugs and hoodlums of America, what they really need is someone who is responsible for them 24 hours a day, seven days a week and who can establish rules and boundaries and actually reinforce them. That person is a parent.

But as stated before, that person may not exist in a child’s life.

So does that mean that these kids are destined to spend the next few decades or possibly a lifetime in jail?

That’s what’s already happening.

Poverty warriors and community activists are often terrified to take the social and cultural issues that involve personal responsibility into account. It is much easier to blame the government, racism, unemployment, and other factors instead of accepting the notion that it takes responsible parents to instill a real value system into our youth. But until these kinds of problems can addressed instead of ignored, there will be places in this country that will continue to be breeding grounds for future criminals.

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