It Starts at Home: Parental Supervision among a Group of Active Juvenile Offenders.

It Starts at Home: Parental Supervision Among a Group of Active Juvenile OffendersAbstractThe apparently simple solution to juvenile delinquency is that prevention begins at home. Parents of delinquents are frequently blamed for their wayward children, and criticized for their child-rearing techniques. The purpose of this paper is to examine the parent/child relationship between a group of active juvenile offenders and their parents. During the course of a larger project, information was collected regarding juvenile perceptions of severity of punishment from their parents, how wrong it is to lie to your parents, and several questions to create an index of parental supervision. This paper seeks to answer the question of whether parents of delinquent children provide significantly less supervision than "regular" parents. The sample consists of 118 active juvenile offenders selected as a convenience sample of juveniles recently referred to a large urban jurisdiction. Bivariate correlations indicate that juveniles reporting lower levels of parent supervision are more likely to report delinquent activity. Factors predicting both self report delinquency and parent supervision will be presented, along with policy implications. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]