SOCIAL AND INTELLECTUAL HANDICAPS AS PRECURSORS OF EARLY DELINQUENCY

Abstract

The criterion of early delinquency used in this report is one or more findings of guilt by a juvenile court on a boy under the age of fourteen years. The data are taken from an on-going research, the Cambridge Study in Delinquent Development, details of which have been published elsewhere (West, 1969). Briefly, the Study is a prospective survey of 411 boys, recruited at age eight to nine, and representing the total male membership of second-year classes in six state primary schools situated in an urban, working-class neighbourhood. All of the boys have now passed their fourteenth birthday, and the older half of the sample are fifteen years of age or more. Searches at the Criminal Record Office and at local children's department offices have established that a total of thirty of these boys, i.e. 7-3 per cent., were early delinquents. Their offences were almost exclusively petty thieving. The thirty boys had been found guilty on a total of fifty-two occasions; forty-two on a charge of larceny or attempted larceny, two for taking and driving away, three for warehouse breaking, two for wilful damage, and one each for causing actual bodily harm, unlawful possession and being on enclosed premises. A further eighty-seven boys, i.e. 21-2 per cent., were classed as unofficial early delinquents on the basis of reports made by teachers, neighbours or parents, of delinquent acts outside the home; action by police short of prosecution; or action taken by a juvenile court on evidence of non-attendance at school.