NCJ Number
73922
Journal
ANNALES DE VAUCRESSON Dated: special issue (1979) Pages: 505-509
Date Published
1979
Length
5 pages
Annotation
This paper deals with the results of using a diagnostic-criminological approach in researching juvenile delinquency as a consequence of the introduction of progressive juvenile codes in Yugoslavia.
Abstract
Since criminologists began to study juvenile offenders with an interdisciplinary approach, the problems of parents in the post-World War II era also became objects of study by researchers. Unfortunately, juvenile delinquency was blamed on the parents, who were subjected to stigmatization in the course of the judicial proceedings concerning their children: this scapegoating of parents also involved the risk of further deterioration of the child-parent relationship. In 1971 a group of researchers from the Law School of the University of Ljubljana surveyed 208 juvenile cases which had been tried in juvenile court. The overall conclusions of this survey indicated that the intervention of social workers which, in effect, transferred the blame for the children's actions to the parents had a greater stigmatizing influence than the judicial proceedings against the juveniles. In the future, it would be advisable to weigh the comparative importance of the roles of all the parties involved in the acts of juvenile delinquency which cause the judicial intervention in the first place. Eight endnotes contain bibliographic references.