RON ALFRED I.

MORENO
MASTERS IN CRIMINAL JUSTICE JUVENILE JUSTICE

Juvenile Delinquency Historical Timeline

THE JUVENILE HARSH BEGINNING
• Children were viewed as non-persons until the 1700's. They did not receive
special treatment or recognition. Discipline then is what we now call abuse.
Assumptions on Juveniles
There were some major assumptions about life before the 1700's.
• The first assumption is that life was hard, and you had to be hard to survive. The
people of that time in history did not have the conveniences that we take for
granted. For example, the medical practices of that day were primitive in
comparison to present-day medicine. Marriages were more for convenience,
rather than for child-bearing or romance.
The second assumption was that infant and child mortality were high. It did not
make sense to the parents in those days to create an emotional bond with
children. There was a strong chance that the children would not survive until
adulthood.
SIGNIFICANT PERSONS INVOLVE IN JUVENILE DELINQUENCY
 
Anomie Theory. The roots of functional theory are found in Durkheim's notion of
anomie ([1897] 1951). To Durkheim, this term meant an absence of social regulation,
or normlessness. Merton (1938, 1957) revived the concept to describe the
consequences of a faulty relationship between goals and the legitimate means of
attaining them. Merton emphasized two features of social and cultural structure:
culturally defined goals (such as monetary success) and the acceptable means (such
as education) to their achievement. Merton argued that in our society success goals
are widely shared, while the means of or opportunities for attaining them are not.
 
Merton's theory is used to explain not only why individual adolescents become
delinquents but also why some classes are characterized by more delinquency than
others. Innovation revolves substituting illegitimate for legitimate means to goal
attainment; it is the resort to this adaptation that is thought to account for much theft
among adolescents from the underclass.
 
 
Subcultural Theory.  Cohen (1955) suggests that children of the underclass, and
potential members of a delinquent subculture, first experience a failure to achieve
when they enter school. When assessed against a "middle-class measuring rod,"
these children are often found lacking.  Cohen argues that these subcultural values
represent a complete repudiation of middle-class standards: the delinquent
subculture expresses contempt for a middle-class lifestyle by making its opposite a
criterion of prestige. The result, according to Cohen, is a delinquent subculture that is
"nonutilitarian, malicious, and negativistic"—an inversion, of middle-class values.
 
Differential Opportunity Theory. Cloward and Ohlin (1960) argue that to understand
the different forms that delinquent and ultimately criminal behavior can take, we must
consider the different types of illegitimate opportunities available to those who seek a
way out of the underclass and where these opportunities lead. Different types of
community settings produce different subcultural responses. Cloward and Ohlin
suggest that three types of responses predominate, each one leading to its own
respective subculture: a stable criminal subculture, a conflict subculture, and a
retreatist subculture.
 The stable criminal subculture offers, as its name suggests, the most promising
(albeit still illegitimate) prospects for upward economic mobility.
 
RON ALFRED I. MORENO
MASTERS IN CRIMINAL JUSTICE JUVENILE JUSTICE

 Social Disorganization Theory. The earliest North American efforts to explain

crime and delinquency in terms of social control focused on the absence of social
bonds at the community level. Entire neighborhoods were seen as being socially
disorganized, as lacking the cohesion and constraint that could prevent crime and
delinquency. This work began in the late 1920s, when Clifford Shaw and Henry
McKay (1931, 1942) sought to identify areas of Chicago that were experiencing social
disorganization. They explored the process that characterized these communities.
What they found were indications of what they assumed to be social disorganization
—truancy, tuberculosis, infant mortality, mental disorder, economic dependency,
adult crime, and juvenile delinquency.
 
Control Theory. At the level of individuals, to have neither goals nor means is to be
uncommitted and thus uncontrolled. Hirschi (1969) has argued that the absence of
control is all that really is required to explain much delinquent behavior. There are
other types of controls (besides commitment to conformity) that may also operate:
involvement in school and other activities; attachments to friends, school, and family;
and belief in various types of values and principles. Hirschi argues that delinquent
behavior is inversely related to the presence of these controls. Alternatively, as these
controls accumulate, so too does conformity. According to control theory, the more
committed, attached, involved, and believing individuals are, the greater is their bond
to society. Again, Hirschi's point is that no special strain between goals and means is
necessarily required to produce delinquent behavior; all that is required is the
elimination of the constraining elements of the social bond.
 
Symbolic-interactionist theories of delinquency are concerned less with values
than with the way in which social meanings and definitions can help produce
delinquent behavior. The assumption, of course, is that these meanings and
definitions, these symbolic variations, affect behavior. 
 
Differential Association Theory. Edwin Sutherland (1939, 1949) anticipated an
emphasis of the symbolic-interactionist perspective with his early use of the concept
of differential association. This concept referred not only to associations among
people but also, and perhaps even more important, to associations among ideas.
Sutherland's purpose was to develop a general theory that explained delinquency as
well as adult criminality. He argued that people violate laws only when they define
such behavior as acceptable and that there is an explicit connection between people
and their ideas (that is, definitions). So, for example, delinquent behavior is "learned
in association with those who define such behavior favorably and in isolation from
those who define it unfavorably," and this behavior occurs when "the weight of the
favorable definitions exceeds the weight of the unfavorable definitions."
 
 
Neutralization Theory. While most of the theories we have considered to this point
portray the delinquent, especially the underclass delinquent, as markedly different
from "the rest of us," Sykes and Matza (1957, 1961) follow Sutherland's lead in
suggesting that the similarities actually outnumber the differences. Their argument is
based in part on the observation that underclass delinquents, like white-collar
criminals, usually exhibit guilt or shame when detected violating the law.
 
Labeling Theory states that people come to identify and behave in ways that reflect
how others label them. This theory is most commonly associated with the sociology of
crime since labeling someone unlawfully deviant can lead to poor conduct. Describing
someone as a criminal, for example, can cause others to treat the person more
negatively, and, in turn, the individual acts out. Lemert (1967) suggests the terms
primary deviance and secondary deviance to distinguish between acts that occur
before and after the societal response. Acts of primary deviance are those that
precede a social or legal response.

 
RON ALFRED I. MORENO
MASTERS IN CRIMINAL JUSTICE JUVENILE JUSTICE

Conflict Theory and Delinquency includes attention to the role of power

relations and economic contradictions in generating delinquency and reactions
to it. For example, conflict theories have focused on the role of dominant
societal groups in imposing legal labels on members of subordinate societal
groups (Turk 1969). The fact that subcultural groups typically are also
subordinate groups ties this work to earlier theoretical traditions discussed
above.
 
 
An Early Group-Conflict Theory. George Vold (1958) was the first North American
sociologist to write explicitly about a group-conflict theory of delinquency. He began
with the assumption that criminality involves both human behavior (acts) and the
judgments or definitions (laws, customs, or mores) of others as to whether specific
behaviors are appropriate and acceptable or inappropriate and disreputable. Of the
two components, Vold regarded judgments and definitions as more significant. His
salient interest was in how groups impose their value judgments by defining the
behaviors of others as illegal. Vold regarded delinquency as a "minority group"
behavior. For example, he argues that "the juvenile gang . . . is nearly always a
'minority group', out of sympathy with and in more or less direct opposition to the
rules and regulations of the dominant majority, that is, the established world of adult
values and powers" .
 

A Theory of Legal Bureaucracy.  According to this principle, laws will be enforced

when enforcement serves the interests of social control agencies and their officials;
and laws will not be enforced when enforcement is likely to cause organizational
strain. In other words, the primary principle of legal bureaucracy involves maximizing
organizational gains while minimizing organizational strains.
 
Recent Structural Theories. Spitzer (1975) begins the formulation of a Marxian
theory of delinquency (and deviance more generally) with the observation, "We must
not only ask why specific members of the underclass are selected for official
processing, but also why they behave as they do" (p. 640).
 
"Integrated structural-Marxist theory" proposed by Colvin and Pauly-(1983). This
theory integrates elements of control theory and Marxian theory. The theory is
comprehensive, and only some of its most striking features can be outlined here.
These features include a Marxian focus on working-class parents' experiences of
coerciveness in the workplace, which Colvin and Pauly suggest lead to coerciveness
in parenting, including parental violence toward children. In turn, Colvin and Pauly
argue that such children are more likely to be placed in coercive control structures at
school and to enter into alliances with alienated peers. All of these experiences make
delinquent behavior more likely, including the violent and instrumental kinds of
delinquent behavior that may be precursors of adult criminality.
 
Power-control theory  generally predicts that in more patriarchal families, sons will
be subjected to less maternal control, develop stronger preferences for risk taking, be
more delinquent, and more often be officially labeled for being so. More recently, this
theory has been elaborated to emphasize that in less patriarchal families mothers
may become more involved in the control of their sons and this can reduce their sons'
involvement in risk taking and delinquency (McCarthy and Hagan 1999).
RON ALFRED I. MORENO
MASTERS IN CRIMINAL JUSTICE JUVENILE JUSTICE

DELINQUENCY DEVELOPMENT
The Enlightenment
• At the end of the 18th century, "The Enlightenment" appeared as a new cultural
transition. This period of history is sometimes known as the beginning of reason
and humanism. People began to see children as flowers, which needed nurturing
in order to bloom. It was the invention of childhood, love and nurturing instead of
beatings to stay in line. Children had finally begun to emerge as a distinct group.
It started with the upper-class, who were allowed to attend colleges and
universities.
Ancient Times
• Since ancient times, enlightened legal systems have distinguished between
juvenile delinquents and adult criminals. Generally, the immature were not
considered morally responsible for their behavior. Under the Code Napoléon in
France, for example, limited responsibility was ascribed to children under the age
of 16. Despite the apparent humanity of some early statutes, however, the
punishment of juvenile offenders was often severe until the 19th century.
Borstal Training Center
• Prior to the 20th century, juvenile offenders were often treated as adults. The first
development contrary to this in the United Kingdom was the establishment of
Borstal training center in place of normal imprisonment, which was intended to
build up the offender's character. They were unsuccessful, and since the 1960s,
policy has been directed away from the detention of young offenders towards
treatment in the community, beginning with avoiding court altogether. The police
are encouraged to caution juveniles who admit an offence, unless they are
persistent offenders.
• When juvenile offenders are dealt with more formally, they are tried by a
dedicated juvenile court, having as little contact with the mainstream system as
possible. There is considerable emphasis on parental responsibility, and the
parents may be ordered to pay the juvenile's fine, or be liable to pay a sum of
money if the child is in trouble again.
• If the courts need to punish juveniles, they can utilize community sentences.
Attendance centers orders, for example, require juveniles to attend during their
leisure hours at centers where they will be given a program of constructive
activities. Supervision orders put juveniles under the supervision of a social
services department, and may include compulsory activities. Those aged 15 and
over may also be sentenced to probation orders (supervision), community
service orders (compulsory work under supervision), or a combination of both.