The article I read was very shocking. I knew that teen pregnancy was rising, but I was alarmed by the number of teens that are pregnant each year. The article basically talked about how adolescent motherhood affects the incarceration rate. According to an article Adolescent Motherhood: Implications for the Juvenile Justice System, the sons of adolescent mothers are 2.7 times more likely to be incarcerated than the sons of mother who have children in their early 20's. Almost 5 percent of all young men were found behind bars over a period of 13 years. This is below the 10.3 percent rate of incarcerated young men born to teen mothers and slightly above the 3.8 percent rate for young men born to mothers who started families at the age of 20 or 21. If the teen mothers would have postponed their pregnancy until the age of at least 20, it would reduce the incarceration rate for the affected children by 13 percent (from 10.3 to 9.1).
             The article stated that the small fraction of the higher incarceration rate is directly attributable to adolescent childbearing costs society dearly. If teen mothers would delay childbearing until the age of 20, that would reduce the national average incarceration rate by 3.5 percent which would add up to an annual savings of about $1 billion in correctional costs and possibly savings of nearly $3 billion in total law enforcement costs. These are of course long range projections.
             Even if they were to postpone childbearing until tomorrow, the incarceration rates would not fall for about 20 years, which is the earliest age at which young offenders begin to go to an actual jail.
             What it all boils down to is the longer the delay, the more reduction in incarceration rates of young men born to would be teen mothers. Teen pregnancy isn't the only contributing factor to the high incarceration rates of young men. However, if the rate of teen mothers would in fact be reduced, it would make a difference.
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