Reforming American Youth Violence

Franklin E. Zimring's American Youth Violence analytically discusses the current status of American youth violence as both a social crisis and a public policy predicament. With the ultimate resolution for a suitable youth crime policy still undetermined, Zimring's suggestions for a youth crime policy focus on mitigating juvenile punishment and instilling adolescent development through experience.

He presents these central ideas of "diminished responsibility" and "room to reform" as potential methods to reform American youth violence for future generations. While Zimring's propositions indicate a sense of empathy and understanding for adolescents, separating juvenile and criminal treatment raises universal issues concerning parenting and justice.

In his discussion of "diminished responsibility," Zimring conveys the strong belief to eliminate juvenile punishment due to the fact that adolescents lack the skills and responsibilities of a typical adult. Although children and adolescents make inappropriate and immoral decisions, he believes they lack the maturity, moral responsibilities, and adult skills that therefore exempt them from being held fully accountable for their illicit actions.

Zimring explains that these adolescents still do not possess the "cognitive understanding" to be rightfully punished as an adult: "Yet the logic of diminished culpability argues that even after a youth passes the minimum threshold of competence, this barely competent youth is not as culpable and therefore not as deserving of a full measure of punishment as a fully qualified adult offender" (75).

This incompetence that Zimring refers to is due to the fact that several critical social skills-moral understanding, controlled impulses, and peer pressure-heavily impact such adolescent misbehavior. Much of these inabilities have not fully developed during the adolescent years and are later slowly overcome by age, social experience, practice, and maturity.