Unit 3: Causative Factors of Juvenile Delinquency
3.1 Individual Factors
3.1.1 Physical Ailments. The body’s risks: neurological (head injury’s impulse-cost; the epilepsy-and-aggression’s old clinical literature); developmental disorders (ADHD’s disinhibition, the learning disabilities’ school-failure cascade); sensory-and-motor handicaps (the communication frustrations, the exclusion’s price); nutrition-and-toxicity (malnutrition’s cognitive toll; the lead-and-pesticide exposures); and puberty’s timing (the early-maturer’s risk — the body ahead of the judgment). The legal relevance: the individual-and-diagnostic face of the social study report (Unit 6) — the disposition should treat what it can name.
3.1.2 Mental Ailments. The mind’s risks: depression-and-anxiety (the self-medication’s substance path; the school refusal’s drift); conduct disorder (the diagnosis nearest delinquency — the aggression-and-rule-breaking pattern; the psychopathy-spectrum’s rare early faces); post-traumatic stress (the violence-exposed child — the abused-and-witnessed trauma’s behavioural price; the victim-offender overlap’s core); substance-use disorders (the entry ages’ fall — the intoxication-and-acquisition offending); and intellectual disability (the suggestibility-and-exploitation vulnerabilities — the false-confession risk of 1.3). Nepal’s deficits: child-and-adolescent mental health services are scarce (the counsellor-less schools, the psychiatric-bed scarcity) — the untreated risks travel from clinic to custody.
3.2 Situational Factors
3.2.1 Family — the first field: the broken-and-conflicted home; harsh or inconsistent discipline (the violence-and-neglect’s double school — abuse teaches and damages at once); the criminal-or-substance-dependent parent (the differential association’s first classroom); the migration-absent parents (Nepal’s remittance villages — the de-facto single-headed and child-headed households); the large-and-resourceless family; and the protective converse — the warm-with-boundaries home as the strongest single shield (the bonds of 2.3).
3.2.2 School — the second field: the failure-and-humiliation cycle
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