This newest phenomenon in the world of crime is perhaps the most dangerous challenge facing society and law enforcement ever. They are younger, more brutal, and completely unafraid of the law. Violent teenage criminals are more vicious. Young people, often from broken homes or so-called dysfunctional families, who commit murder, rape, robbery, kidnapping, and other violent acts. These emotionally damaged young people, often are the products of sexual or physical abuse. They live in an aimless and violent present and have no sense of the past and no hope for the future. These young criminals commit unspeakably brutal crimes against other people, often to please whatever urges or desires drive them at the moment and their utter lack of remorse is shocking (Worsham 1997). Studies reveal that the major cause of violent crime is not poverty but family breakdown; specifically, the absence of a father in the household. Today, one-fourth of all the children in the United States are living in fatherless homes which adds up to 19 million children without fathers. Compared to children in two parent family homes, these children will be twice as likely to drop out of school, twice as likely to have children out of wedlock, and they stand more than three times the chance of ending up in poverty, and almost ten times more likely to commit violent crime and ending up in jail (Easton 1995). The Heritage Foundation reported that the rise in violent crime over the past 30 years runs directly parallel to the rise in fatherless families. In every state in our country according to the Heritage foundation, the rate for juvenile crime is closely linked to the percentage of children raised in single-parent families. While it has long been thought that poverty is the primary cause of crime, the facts simply don't support this view. Teenage criminal behavior has its roots in habitual deprivation of parental love and affection going back to early infancy, acc...
