I feel that one of the biggest problems that the United States is faced with in the present day is juvenile crime. Juvenile crime does not only affect the individuals who commit the crime, it also affects the victim of the crime. This also affects the juvenile in their adult lives as the crime can be on their record as long as they live. Experts still have not found the main reason why juvenile's commit crimes. However, they have come up with a number of reasons of why juvenile's commit crimes, which I will be discussing in this paper..
             The largest, and most common risk factor is the demise of the family life and the increase in family violence. Many say that how you are raised will make you the person that you are as you grow up. So, doesn't it make sense to say that if you are raised poorly, you would be more prone to run into problems such as crime as you grow up? Between the 1970's and early 1990's, the number of juveniles living in poverty has grown largely for a number of reasons. This factor alone has caused a noticeable increase in crimes by juveniles. Many of these juvenile criminals also said to have been abused or neglected. For the majority, they also grew up in a single-parent household. Research has found that the majority of these children are more likely to be arrested, and are much more likely to commit a violent crime as an adult, than their counterparts who did not suffer such abuse. The reasoning for this is that psychologists have determined that the symptoms of child abuse are "high levels of aggression and antisocial behavior". Another factor that has greatly attributed to juvenile crime is something that the children have no control over. This is improper parental care. Mothers who drink alcohol, take drugs, smoke cigarettes, and do other such things while they are pregnant are putting their children at high risk for problems. These drugs keep the babies from getti...