Juvenile Delinquency Theorie

Early theories of why youth become delinquents focused on the socially disorganized neighborhoods in rapidly urbanizing and industrializing U.S. cities. The common belief was that the problem lay in the exposure of youth in these transitional communities (many of them children of European immigrants and African American migrants from the rural South) to conflicting cultural norms and parents with fewer personal and institutional resources for socializing and supervising them to ensure law-abiding behavior. Although some critics of the social disorganization perspective noted an over-reliance on official statistics that might neglect delinquency by middle- and upper-class youth, the neighborhood disorganization perspective remains influential--especially as an explanation of violent and gang delinquency.

In the 1950s and 1960s "strain theorists" also focused on delinquency by socioeconomically disadvantaged youth. Robert Merton described a "goalsmeans disjunction" whereby all youth are socialized to desire success, but not all have the legitimate means to attain success. Merton suggested that economically disadvantaged youth might respond to the resulting strain by resorting to illegitimate means (e.g., stealing) or by retreatist behavior such as substance abuse. Albert Cohen also described the strain that lower-class children experience in school when they fail to meet the academic and behavioral expectations of middle-class teachers. They may cope with this "status frustration" by joining delinquent peer groups. Critics argue that strain theory, like social disorganization theory, exaggerates the delinquent involvement of lower-class youth while neglecting to explain why so many middle-class youth also engage in delinquency. Remedying this limitation is Robert Agnew's general strain theory, which suggests that a variety of social strains, not just the strain associated with poverty, can cause delinquency.

Whereas social disorganization and early strain theories emphasized social structural inequalities as the primary cause of delinquency, process theorists focus on social interactions within primary groups such as the family and peer group. Two influential process theories are the social learning theory and the social bonding theory. Social learning theory, also known as differential association theory, suggests that juvenile delinquents learn delinquent values, attitudes, and behavior through their associations in families, peer groups, schools, and neighborhoods. According to this perspective, the delinquent is essentially normal, but through exposure to deviant influences, the youth learns delinquent behavior in the same ways that any other behavior is learned.

Whereas social learning theorists view relationships as the cause of delinquency, social bonding theorists view a lack of strong social attachments as the cause of delinquency. Social bonding theorists assert