ile Crime and Justice in the U.S.. Briscoe (p. 4) provides an overview of juvenile crime in America, noting that in 1995 there were an estimated 2.7 million arrests of persons under the age of 18, for a total of 18 percent of all arrests. Juvenile were involved in 32 percent of all robbery arrests, 23 percent of weapons arrests, and 15 percent of murder and aggravated assault arrests in 1995. More significantly, juveniles under the age of 15 were responsible for 30 percent of juvenile violent crime arrests in 1995, but they also accounted for more than one-half (55 percent) of the decline in these arrests from 1994 to 1995. DiIulio, says Briscoe (p. 3), has coined a new term to identify a growing population of particularly violent, antisocial, amoral juvenile offenders - "Superpredators" -- and argues that the number of American juveniles arrested for murder, rape, robbery and aggravated assault will more than double by 2010.
Inmates in maximum security penal institutions told DiIulio in a survey conducted by the criminologist that the absence of positive moral role models was directly responsible for suggesting that a life of crime -- following the behaviors of the gangsta' rappers as well as home-grown street drug deals and criminals -- was cool (Briscoe, p. 3). To validate the argument that a lack of morally nurturing and normative adult influences are available, and to suggest that the reverse is true, Briscoe (p. 6) draws upon the following data:
. 53 percent of juvenile delinquents are likely to be victims of abuse or neglect at the hands of parent(s) or caretakers;
. 38 percent of all abused or neglected children are likely to be arrested as adults.
In the U.S., according to Cohn (1999), the juvenile justice system has functioned for more than fifty years in the context of a "rehabilitative ideal," which has meant that a plethora of prevention and intervention programs have been created to address both the ca...