As a newspaper reporter, I covered and was around a fair number of crime scenes involving juvenile delinquents, and few things bothered me more than listening to their parents. Crying, ranting, proclaiming how great their children were despite being kicked out of school or previous run-ins with the law.
Before rap came along, I was, actually, actively in the streets; getting in trouble, doing the wrong thing.
Either you were a hoodlum, or you were a puddle on the sidewalk.
One of my friends once saw another guy's (criminal) record and said, 'Look, this guy is a born troublemaker, just a loser.' I had to tell him, 'No, that's my record - and it doesn't include my juvenile history.'
Hooliganism incarnate, a walking, talking, screaming, squawking metaphor for What's Wrong With Young People Today.
I am so sick of you smart kids. Why can't you just boost cars or steal stuff like normal kids?' 'We do steal stuff. Just bigger stuff.
And you're a bad boy?" I asked. Ollie's grin was contagious. "Oh, I'm a bad, bad boy." Cam shot his friend a look. "Yeah, as in bad at spelling, math, english, cleaning up after yourself, talking to people, and I could go on.
Benjamin Franklin was probably America’s first juvenile delinquent.
I heard someone's playing hooky,' Zach told me. He smiled. Standing there, it felt almost like nothing bad had ever happened- or would ever happen again 'There's a boy in my life,' I told him. 'He's a very bad influence.' Then Zach nodded. 'Bad boys have a way of doing that. But they're worth it.
I'm what they call an intelligent hoodlum.
My favorite subjects was science and math. But as I got older, I was hanging out cutting class, going to hooky parties.
I was a total bad girl growing up.
Caprice, independence and rebellion, which are opposed to the social order, are essential to the good health of an ethnic group. We shall measure the good health of this group by the number of its delinquents. Nothing is more immobilizing than the spirit of deference.
I've had a pretty chequered past, you know, as a kid, as a troubled kid.
I wasn't stealing cars at like, six. But I've always been bad.
These are not ordinary human beings. They are criminals. As a matter of fact, they are criminals, both by nature and by training. By nature, because they are not decent. They are criminals.
The writer is either a practicing recluse or a delinquent, guilt-ridden one--or both. Usually both.
I am a greaser. I am a JD and a hood. I blacken the name of our fair city. I beat up people. I rob gas stations. I am a menace to society. Man do I have fun!
No one wakes up one day and decides they want to become a drug dealer or they want to be a stick-up kid. Those decisions are made after a series of events have happened in one's life.
Juvenile delinquency serves many purposes, including that of providing sadistic adults with fantasies suited to their special tastes.
A thug is what I want and a thug is what I need. And my friends don't understand, and I think it's jealousy.
Whenever I am doing anything else, which is most of the time, even if it is not something like robbing a bank, I feel felonious. Writing is what I'm supposed to be doing.
I probably lived more of a rock-star life when I was 15. I got in trouble a fair amount. I cared more about hanging out and skipping school than studying.
Crime is a left- handed form of human endeavor.
The inevitable disruption of family life necessitated by the woman being a co-wage earner with the man has discouraged the Negro woman from child-bearing. Juvenile delinquents are recruited largely from the motherless home. That is the home that is without the constant care of the mother or head of the house. For a child to arise in the morning after both parents are gone, get itself an indifferent breakfast, go to school uncared for, lunch on a penny's worth of sweets, and return to a cold and cheerless house or apartment to await the return of a jaded and fatigued mother to get supper, is not conducive to sweetness and light in its behavior. Truancy, street walking, petty thievery and gang rowdyism are the natural results of this lack of family life.
