Preventing Crime, Saving Children: Monitoring, Mentoring & Ministering

This report analyzes the rise in juvenile crime and offer suggestions on how to halt it.  Young criminals share many characteristics- they are concentrated in urban minority neighborhoods, they are often victims of abuse and neglect, and they are raised in single-parent households offering them minimal adult supervision. In order to prevent juvenile offenders from developing into career criminals, the authors argue, contacts between caring non-parental adults and at-risk youth must be increased. Only then will children acquire the role models and monitoring they need to avoid a life of crime.

Toward this end, the Council advocates such efforts as more thorough monitoring by probation officers, increased funding for mentor programs such as Big Brothers/Big Sisters, and greater efforts by religious authorities to reach out to at-risk youth. This three-pronged strategy of monitoring, mentoring and ministering, the authors argue, will reduce the threat posed by juvenile criminality.

Read the full report