(this was: Re: [PEN-L:20219] Re: Re: Re: sacred American art forms III)
At 11:37 PM 6/14/00 -0400, you wrote:
>The theory underlying MFY's work on juvenile delinquency derived from work
>by Cloward and Lloyd Ohlin--in particular, their 1960 book Delinquency and
>Opportunity: A Theory of Delinquent Gangs. The idea behind it was that
>rather than just being "bad" a la Officer Krupke, juvenile delinquents
>faced "blocked opportunities" that prevented them from moving upward.
It's interesting that there was a story about the debate about these issues
on US National Public Radio yesterday. These days in the US (that beacon of
civilization), the main solution to the problem of JDs is to prosecute and
jail them as adults if they commit "adult" crimes like murder and rape.
More and more, this "solution" is applied to kids as young as 13. The idea
of unblocking the opportunties seems to have faded. The story was more
editorial in style that usual, finishing with what the reporter (and her
editors) saw as the ideal compromise: prosecute the JDs as adults, but jail
them as kids, separate from the adult perps, while giving them education
and other services seen as appropriate for youth.
JD
