NCJ Number
132082
Date Published
1990
Length
6 pages
Annotation
The United Nations 1985 Seventh Congress on the Prevention of Crime and the Treatment of Offenders adopted a recommendation on juvenile delinquency prevention that emphasizes "juveniles at social risk."
Abstract
The term "juveniles at social risk" denotes young persons who are demonstrably endangered and in need of nonpunitive measures because of the effects of their circumstances on health, safety, education, and psychosocial development. The social risk model adopted by the United Nations Seventh Congress reflects the need for nonpunitive, nonstigmatizing, and fair strategies to deal with delinquent youth. Such strategies should be designed to achieve their goals by the following means: focusing on those whose psychosocial development is in danger; neutralizing the effects of entrapment in irregular situations, of coming into conflict with the law, and of being victimized; replacing old legal, sociomedical, and criminological categories that are based on broad and discriminatory morality judgments and false assumptions about delinquency causation; and reconciling early intervention with formal social controls in the juvenile justice system framework. The concept of "juveniles at social risk" largely meets the contemporary need for care and protection of certain minors and for early intervention to prevent delinquency without undue widening of social control. Measures of a clearly social and constructive nature should be used for nondelinquent juveniles to prevent future delinquency. Such measures could include the multidimensional use of welfare alternatives, imaginative approaches to managing sociocultural problems, youth mobilization for delinquency prevention through self-help programs, and parental counseling. 27 notes