Sins of the fatherless: how broken homes contribute to juvenile crime
By Craig Ortega, Mercator.
Last month’s shooting at the Kansas City Chief’s Super Bowl rally, in which one person was killed and 22 were wounded, involved two juveniles. They have since been charged with gun offences and resisting arrest. The two youths have not been identified. However, I can make an educated guess about their family dynamics – they probably came from a dysfunctional home.
A recent report from the Institute for Family Studies, Stronger Families, Safer Streets, examines the connection between family structure and crime in American cities. It says that: “strong families are associated with less crime in cities across the United States” and “public safety is greater in communities where the two-parent family is the dominant norm”.
Fathers in the home protect boys against delinquency, crime and jail. And fathers also determine the course of their daughters’ lives, as Meg Meeker shows in her classic book Strong Fathers, Strong Daughters. Most of us will agree that this is just common sense. But I sense that law enforcement and juvenile justice officials, as well as some in academic circles, don’t always see it this way.
This year’s national conference of The National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges fails to feature a discussion of fatherlessness and family structure, or why encouraging marriage is in the public’s best interest. Similarly, the Juvenile Justice Association of Texas 2023 Spring Conference did not include a discussion of why marriage leads to positive outcomes for juveniles and the surrounding community.
Firsthand experience
I have more than two decades of experience as a juvenile probation officer. I have worked in field services, the juvenile district courts, and residential services, as well as training, accreditation and quality assurance. I’m retired now, but two themes throughout my career were absent fathers and an unstable family structure. To come across juvenile delinquents raised by their own biological mother and father who were married and lived in an intact home was a rarity. More often, the youth was being raised by a single mother, a stepparent, a grandparent, a relative, or a family friend. Many had been wards of the state.
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