Unit 2: Theories of Juvenile Delinquency
2.1 Biological Theories
The body’s account of the young offender: Lombroso’s atavism (the born criminal’s stigmata — the founding error and the method’s beginning); the heredity studies (twins and adoptions — the genetic share of aggression-and-impulsivity, modest and interactive); the neurological turn — head injury, ADHD-and-impulse disorders, the prefrontal maturation’s pace (the modern biology that actually matters for juveniles: the developmental biology of 1.3, not the defect biology of Lombroso); the nutrition-and-toxin hypotheses (lead’s shadow — the environmental-biology frontier); and the hormonal adolescence (puberty’s activation effects). The verdict (the exam’s line): biology supplies dispositions and vulnerabilities, never destinies — and for juveniles especially, the biology is in motion (the maturity gap that most grow out of).
2.2 Psychological Theories
The mind’s account: psychoanalytic (the weak-or-strict superego, the unconscious guilt’s roundabout self-punishment — Freud’s school, names only); learning theories (behaviourism’s reinforcement — the rewarded stealing; Bandura’s social learning — the modelled violence of home and screen); cognitive development (Kohlberg’s moral stages — the pre-conventional juvenile stuck at “not getting caught”; the moral-reasoning deficit findings); personality-and-impulsivity (the low self-control trait — the psychology’s strongest single predictor; the sensation-seeking of adolescence); intelligence-and-school failure (the contested IQ link — mediated through school failure and its alienation); attachment theory (Bowlby’s broken bonds — the unattached child’s empathy deficit; the affectionless psychopathy’s old clinical pictures). The juvenile synthesis: the psychological risks cluster in the school-age years — the intervention’s window is the classroom-and-counselling, not the cell.
2.3 Sociological Theories
Society’s account (the mainstream — the Criminology parent-course’s rivers, applied to the young):
- Social disorganization (the neighbourhood’s failure of control — the adolescent roams where no one watches; Shaw and McKay’s zones).
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