Types of juvenile delinquency

Delinquency exhibits a variety of styles of conduct or forms of behavior. Each of the patterns has its own social context, the causes are alleged to bring it about, and the forms of prevention or treatment most often suggested as appropriate for the pattern in question. Howard Becker (1966) has referred to following four types of delinquencies:

Individual Delinquency

This refers to delinquency in which only one individual is involved in committing a delinquent act and its cause is located within the individual delinquent. Most of the explanations of this delinquent behavior come from psychiatrists. Their argument is that delinquency is caused by the psychological problems stemming primarily from defective/faulty/pathological family interaction patterns.

Group-Supported Delinquency

In this type, the delinquencies are committed in companionship with others and the cause is located not in the personality of the individual or in the delinquent's family but in the culture of the individual's home and neighborhood.

Organized Delinquency

This type of delinquency refers to delinquencies that are committed by developing formally organized groups. These delinquencies were analyzed in the United States in the 1950s and the concept of ‘delinquent sub-culture was developed. This concept refers to the set of values and norms that guide the behavior of group members encourage the commission of delinquencies, award status on the basis of such acts and specify typical relationships to person who fall outside the groupings governed by group norms.

Situational Delinquency

The above three types of delinquencies have one thing in common. In all of them, delinquency is viewed as having deep roots. In individual delinquency, the root of delinquency lies primarily within individual. In group-supported delinquency and organized delinquencies the roots lie in the structure of the society with emphasis either on the ecological areas where delinquency prevails or the systematic way in which social structure places some individuals in a poor position to compete for success. The situational delinquency provides a different perspective. Here the assumption is that delinquency is not deeply rooted, and motives for delinquency and means for controlling it are often relatively simple. A young man indulges in a delinquent act without having a deep commitment to delinquency because of less developed impulse control or because of lesser reinforcement of family restraints and because he has relatively little to lose even if caught.

Factors of Juvenile Delinquency

What causes juvenile delinquency or adult crime? There is no simple or straightforward answer available. Although criminal behaviour sometimes has its roots in juvenile delinquency, many juvenile delinquents do not become criminals as adults. Further, many criminals have no prior history of juvenile delinquency. However, the range of offences, motivations and associated causative factors are much the same in both delinquency and crime and it may be appropriate to discuss them together. What impels some people, children, women and men to break social sanction or any law? Efforts have been made by a number of writers and researchers to understand the factors involved and they have discovered many : physical, emotional, psychological and environmental. It has not been possible to assign a single universal source nor even two or three. Crime flows out of a wide variety of sources and usually from a multiplicity of alternative and converging influences. Without contending that they will inevitably cause delinquency or crime, it is now accepted that certain conditions are more favourable to this causation than others. For example, physical deformity, mental imbalance, mental deficiency, emotional insecurity, a slum environmental stimulation to crime, etc., are obviously more favourable to anti-social behaviour than their opposites. It is also true that any or all of these unfavourable conditions will not inevitably drive a given person to commit a crime in all circumstances. It is true that all seemingly favourable circumstances are no insurance against a person committing a crime. Hidden factors that tip the scale either way can never be eliminated from specific situations by all the theories of causation in the world. In this sort of perplexing situation then, what we can say, at best, is that the area of unknown regarding human behaviour is quite substantial though some personal factors and some common social and economic conditions go hand in hand with the committing of crime and delinquency. And the impact of these factors, and their varying combinations, differ greatly from one individual to another. In some cases the factors responsible may be more personal than environmental, whereas in other cases the reverse may be true.