NCJ Number
73921
Journal
ANNALES DE VAUCRESSON Dated: special issue (1979) Pages: 485-497
Date Published
1979
Length
13 pages
Annotation
This theoretical paper presents the outline of an attempt to use a systematic interactionist family therapy approach to juvenile delinquency, in which the family is viewed as part of the global social system which it reproduces and -- partially -- produces.
Abstract
Based on the labeling theory and its corollary theory of secondary deviance, this study argues that young people belonging to the lower socioeconomic strata are first made vulnerable to negative self-concepts and self-labeling within their family units through stigmatization by their parents as a consequence of some early delinquent act. The families of these juvenile offenders are themselves deprived of all status symbols within society: their children start school with social handicaps leading to failure first in school, then in society. When these marginal young people commit some infraction and end up in juvenile court, the judicial intervention, no matter how benevolent, how much oriented toward the reeducation and social reintegration of its young clients, reinforces the low self-concept they had already acquired through their family, the schools, and society. The interactionistic approach must also take into consideration how the juvenile justice system recruits its clients among the lower socioeconomic classes, already vulnerable to stigmatization and labeling. Criminological research in this area must follow an interactionistic and structural approach, without falling into the trap of a sociological determinism which threatens to take the place of the bio-psychiatric determinism of earlier times. Thirty references are appended.