Questions From Readers
● “Juvenile delinquency on the increase!” Is that not a cry of an adult generation that has conveniently forgotten its own youthful escapades? Are not some politicians correct in attributing delinquency’s statistical increase to improved police efficiency in methods of exposing crime and capturing criminals? Further, is not population centralization responsible for a great deal of the accent on delinquency? And, too, with a growing world population, is it not natural to expect more marriages, more children, more divorces and more delinquency?—S. G., United States.
None of these arguments stand up under a truthful examination. The growth of divorces, delinquency and crime has far surpassed the population increase rate. Benjamin Fine, in his book One Million Delinquents, says the population has increased 5 percent since 1950, while crime has leaped ahead 20 percent in the same period. Worse yet was this figure: In 1953 adult crime rose 1.9 percent, but child crime rose 7.9 percent. In 1956 there was an increase of 17.2 juvenile arrests over 1955, while the number of persons aged 10-17 increased less than 3 percent. In 1956 juvenile arrests were nearly 42 percent higher than in 1952, while the juvenile population had increased only 13.5 percent. With more policemen, educational and social centers, etc., there should have been a marked decrease in the percentage of delinquents, but the opposite is true.
Crime is no longer a phenomenon peculiar to city slums, nor can poverty and war receive all the blame. Juvenile crime has spread to the suburbs and to the rural sections. It has taken root at all social levels. In Sweden, where there has been no war and very little poverty, the country has one of the highest divorce rates in Europe and juvenile and adult delinquency have became major problems. The American Weekly of November 13, 1955, stated that in Sweden’s population of some 7,000,000 “there are 27,000 illegitimate children a year”; “that of every 10 Swedish women now being married, seven have conceived at least one child before reaching the altar.” Justice Samuel H. Hofstadter charged that it is the corruption of the elders that “has spawned the delinquency of the young.” He said that the problem “cuts across nations, cultures and ideologies. . . . We live in a climate of moral and physical violence—and our children reflect the world of which they are a part.”
Jesus and his apostles foretold that these conditions would befall this generation. Jesus said: “Because of the increasing of lawlessness the love of the greater number will cool off.” Paul wrote: “But know this, that in the last days critical times hard to deal with will be here. For men will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, self-assuming, haughty, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, without gratitude, with no loving-kindness, . . . lovers of pleasures rather than lovers of God.” We who live today are privileged to see these words being fulfilled before our very eyes. It is a sign of the outgoing of a dying old world and an assurance that the new world is near at hand.—Matt. 24:12; 2 Tim. 3:1-5; 2 Pet. 3:3-13.