Juvenile Delinquency and

Crime Prevention
Mr. Christian T. Pascual, MSCJ
Assistant Professor, University of the Cordilleras
 Basic Concepts

• Child
• A person who is below eighteen
(18) years of age.
• Filipino Child (PD 603)
• A minor or a youth; any person below 18 years
old, a boy or a girl at any age between infancy
and adolescence; however, the law includes
infants and even unborn children.
• A person who is below 18 years old or those
over but unable to fully take care of
themselves from abuse, neglect, cruelty,
exploitation or discrimination because of a
physical or mental disability or condition.

3
• Dependent Child
• A person who is without a parent,
guardian or custodian, or whose
parents, guardian or custodian for
good cause desires to be relieved of
his care and custody, and is
dependent upon the public for
support.
•Abandoned Child
•A person who has no proper
parental care or guardianship,
or whose parents or guardian
has deserted him for a period of
at least six continuous months.

5
• Neglected Child
• A person whose basic needs have
been deliberately unattended to
or inadequately attended to,
physically or emotionally, by his
parents or guardians.
•Physical Neglect
•It occurs when the child is
malnourished, ill clad and
without proper shelter.

7
• Emotional Neglect
• It occurs when a child is raped,
seduced, maltreated, exploited,
overworked or made to work under
streets or public places, or when
placed in moral danger, or exposed to
drugs, alcohol, gambling, prostitution
and other vices.

8
• Disabled Child
• It includes mentally retarded,
physically handicapped,
emotionally disturbed and
mentally ill children, children with
cerebral palsy and those inflicted
with similar afflictions.

9
• Mentally Retarded Child
• A person who is (a) socially incompetent, that
is, socially inadequate, occupationally
incompetent and unable to manage his own
affairs; (b) mentally subnormal; (c)
intellectually retarded from birth or early age;
(d) retarded at maturity; (5) mentally deficient
as a result of constitutional origin through
heredity or diseases or (6) essentially incurable.
• Physically Handicapped Child
• A person who is crippled, deaf-mute,
or otherwise, suffers from a defect
which restricts his means of action or
communication with others.

11
• Mentally Ill Child
• A person who have behavioral
disorder, whether functional or
organic, which is of such a degree
of severity as to require
professional help or hospitalization.

12
• Emotionally Disturbed Child
• A person who, although not afflicted
with insanity or mental defect, is unable
to maintain normal social relations with
others and the community in general
due to emotional problems or
complexes.
• Commitment or Surrender of a Child
• It is the legal act of entrusting a child
to the care of the Department or any
duly licensed child placement or child
caring agency or individual by the
court, parent or guardian.
• Involuntarily Committed Child
• A person whose parents, have been
permanently and judicially deprived of
parental authority due to
abandonment; substantial, continuous
or repeated neglect; abuse or
incompetence to discharge parental
responsibility.

15
• Voluntarily Committed Child
• A person whose parents’ knowingly
and willingly relinquished parental
authority to the Department or any
duly licensed child-placement or
child-caring agency or individual.
• Child-placing or Child-Placement Agency
• It refers to a private non-profit institution
or government agency duly licensed and
accredited by the Department to provide
comprehensive child welfare services,
including but not limited to receiving
application for adoption or foster care,
evaluating the prospective adoptive or
foster parents and preparing the home
study report.
17
• Child-Caring Agency
• It refers to a private non-profit
institution or government agency duly
licensed and accredited by the
Department that provides twenty-four
hour residential care services for
abandoned, orphaned, neglected,
involuntarily or voluntarily committed
children.
• Guardian Ad Litem
• A person appointed by the court
where the case is pending for a
child sought to be committed to
protect his best interests.

19
•Child in Conflict with the Law
•A person who at the time of the
commission of the offense is
below eighteen (18) years of
age but not less than nine (9)
years of age.
•Age of Criminal Responsibility
•It is the age when a child who
is above fifteen (15) but below
eighteen (18) years of age
commits an offense with
discernment.

21
•Discernment
•It refers to the mental
capacity to understand the
difference between right
and wrong and its
consequences
22
•Restorative Justice
•It is the principle that requires a
process of resolving conflicts
with the maximum involvement
of the victim, the offender and
the community.
• Youth Detention Center
• It refers to a government-owned
or operated agency providing
rehabilitative facilities where the
child in conflict with the law
maybe physically restricted
pending court disposition of the
charge against him.
24
• Juvenile
• He is a child or a young person, who
under the legal system maybe dealt
with for an offense in a manner
different from that of an adult.

25
• Delinquency
• Delinquency refers to any action;
course or conduct that deviate from
acts approved by the majority of
people. It is a description of acts
that do not conform to the
accepted rules, norms and mores of
the society.
• Juvenile Delinquency
• It is used to describe a large number of
disapproved behaviors of children or
youths. In this sense, anything that the
youth does which other do not like is called
Juvenile Delinquency.
• It refers to any action or conduct of
children or youth that are not conventional
or not normally accepted by the people.
• Status Offenses
• These are certain acts or omission which
may not be punishable if committed by
adults, but become illegal only because
the person is under age and the act was
committed primarily by children, minors,
juveniles, youthful offenders or other
person in need of supervision or
assistance.
• Examples:
– sexual misconduct or immoral conduct
– use of profane language
– running away from home
– smoking, drinking, or use of prohibited
substances
– disobedience to parents or school officials
– association with criminals or delinquent
friends
– repeated disregard for misuse of lawful
parental authority
29
• Parens Patriae
• It simply states that the state has
the right to benevolently intervene
in the care and custody of the child.
• Simply, the state shall become the
parents of the child.

30
ETIOLOGY OF DELINQUENCY
 Demonological Theory
• It is bases on the belief of early primitive
people that every object and person is guided
by a spirit.

32
 Classical Theory

• This was advocated by Cesare Beccaria and Jeremy

Bentham.
• It promoted the idea that people choose criminality
the same way when they choose conformity: the
youth commit crime because they think or imagine
greater things can be earned through conformity.
This is because people are by nature hedonistic.
• Hedonism is a doctrine which states that men
naturally seek pleasure and avoid pain.
• The following are the reasons why
delinquent persons and offenders should
be punished:
• GENERAL DETERRENCE
• SPECIFIC DETERRENCE
• RETRIBUTION
 Neo-Classical Theory
• The theory which contends that
children and lunatics cannot calculate
pain and pleasure, therefore, they must
exempted from incurring criminal
liability.
 Positivists or Italian Theory
• It was advocated by Cesare Lombroso,
Enrico Ferri, and Rafaelle Garofalo.
• Positivist’s theory promoted the idea of
DETERMINISM as a way of explaining crime
and delinquency. Determinism means that
every act has a cause that is waiting to be
discovered in the real world.

36
 Critical Theory
• This theory views juvenile delinquency as a
byproduct of existing social arrangements. The
concepts of power, influence, inequality, and
conflict guide this theory in exploring and
clarifying the nature of juvenile delinquency.
• This theory blames the causes of juvenile
delinquency on the imbalance of power within
the human society.
 A. BIOLOGICAL THEORIES

• These are groups of theories which claimed

that physical appearance reveals the characters
in a manner that criminals have distinctive
physical characteristics that makes them
identifiable as delinquents or criminal
offenders.
 LOMBROSIAN THEORY

• It was introduced by Cesare Lombroso, the Father of

Modern Criminology, in 1876.
• He believed that certain physical features identified the
convict in prison as a “born criminal”.
• The born criminal is an “atavism” which simply means
that he has the physical make-up, mental capabilities,
and instinct of primitive man.
• He maintained that a born criminal could be identified
by the possession of certain visible stigmata such as
asymmetry of the face, or head, large monkey like ears,
receding chin, and others.
 GENERAL INFERIORITY THEORY

• It was advocated by Ernest Hooton, a Harvard

anthropologist.
• He argued that criminals are inferior to civilians
in nearly all of their bodily measurements.
 SOMATOTYPING THEORY

• It was advocated by William Sheldon whose ideas

were concentrated on the “Survival of the Fittest” as
behavioral science.
• He believes that inheritance was the primary
determinants of one’s behavior and the body
physique was a reliable indicator of personality.
• MESOMORPHY-DELINQUENCY RELATIONSHIP –
delinquency exists because there are mesomorphic
men or youth that are responsible for its occurrence
 GENETICS THEORY

• This theory states that people who have

abnormal genetic structure or
chromosomal activities commit crimes
and delinquency.
 B. PSYCHOLOGICAL THEORIES

• A group of theory that assumed that:

• Delinquency is a result of internal, underlying
disturbances.
• These disturbances develop in childhood and
tend to become permanent features of the
individuals character.
 FREUDIAN PSYCHOANALYTICAL THOERY

• The four main elements in Freud’s Theory are as follows:

• Human nature is inherently anti-social. Every child
possesses a set of primitive anti-social instincts that he
called the ID.
• Good behavior comes thru effective socialization. Thru
socialization, the child learns internal control.
• The life-long features of the human personality originate
in early childhood. By the age of 5, all of the essential
features of the child’s adult personality have been
developed.
• Delinquent behavior is the result of a defective superego.
• MAL-ADJUSTMENT - a condition experienced
by a person when he is not well adjusted to his
own circumstances and environment.
• PSYCHOPATH – a person without conscience
(superego) and thus, without control over his
or her behavior.
 THE LOW IQ THEORY

• Wilson and Hernstein suggested that low IQ is

associated with one’s inability to reason
morally, reestablishing the notion that it
represents not only a cognitive but also a moral
backwardness.
• ATTENTION DEFICIENT HYPERACTIVITY THEORY
• Immaturity and hyperactivity cause Juvenile
Delinquency.
• Grade schools usually experience attention deficit
hyperactivity disorder, which is characterized by:
• Short attention span
• day dreaming
• sluggishness
• preoccupation
• impulsiveness
 FRUSTRATION-AGGRESSION THEORY

• People who are frustrated will act aggressively, and

people who engage in aggression are frustrated first.
• Aggression – a behavior whose goal is to inflict
damage or injury on some object or person and it
maybe:
• Overt – physical or verbal
• Covert – like wishing someone is dead
• Frustration – a behavior directed at anticipated goals
or expectations or a person must have expecting the
attainment of a goal or achievement in order to be
frustrated
 C. SOCIOLOGICAL THEORIES

• The new sociological theories blame delinquency on

social and environmental circumstances.
• Some observers assumed that disintegration and
disorganization made individuals more likely to
engage in delinquency.
• The prevailing opinion was that the lower class was
responsible for the majority of delinquency.
• GANG THEORY
• It was advocated by Frederick Thrasher.
• A gang is a band of people going about
together or working especially for some
criminal purposes.
• Delinquency develop through the following:
• a. Gangs originated as playgroups.
• b. Playgroups are transformed into gangs.
• c. Competition for turf leads to gang conflict.
• d. Delinquent gangs may have complex social
structure as any other social group.
 DIFFERENTIAL ASSOCIATION THEORY
• It was advocated by Edwin Sutherland.
• He stated that criminal behavior is learned
through social interactions.
 ECOLOGICAL THEORY

• It was then advocated by Clifford Shaw and Henry

McKay.
• They believed that juvenile delinquency could be
understood only by considering the social context in
which youth lived – context that itself was a product
of major societal transformation brought by:
• Occurrence of rapid social change procedure by
industrialization, urbanization and immigration.
• Rapid social changer produces dilapidated area.
 SOCIAL – PSYCHOLOGICAL APPROACH

• It emphasizes the cause of delinquency by

imitation.
• Imitation refers to the engagement in behavior
after the observation of similar behavior in
others.
 WALTER B. MILLER’S THEORY

• He examined lower class areas in Boston and came

to different conclusions.
• In a nutshell, he saw a society composed of groups,
which, while sharing some values, had otherwise,
differing lifestyles and norms. The lower class was
simply a separate culture whose expectations and
values were different from those of the middle
class.
• He came to see delinquency as an expression of a
culture present in slum neighborhoods.
 STRAIN THEORY

• It was advocated by Robert Merton.

• It emphasizes the predominance of crime and
delinquency among the lower class and minority
populations, the most deprived of legitimate
opportunities.
• Anomie refers to the breakdown of social norms and a
condition where those norms could no longer control
the activity of societal members. Without clear rules to
guide them, individuals cannot find their place in society
and have difficulty adjusting to the changing conditions
of life. This in turn leads to dissatisfaction, frustration
deviance and conflict
 ANOMIE THEORY

• He maintained that crime is an

important ingredient of all healthy
societies because crime makes
people more aware of their
common interest and help to define
appropriate, moral or lawful
behavior.
• a. CRIME IS NORMAL.
• Crime is nothing more than a consequence of the
creation and the application of norms. It is
because some behavior is wrong that other
behavior is right. That is why crime is normal.
• b. CRIME IS FUNCTIONAL.
• Crime is functional to society because crime is the
basis for social change. Crime often points out to
the social group those elements, processes, or
arrangements that may need to be changed.
 SUBCULTURE THEORY
• Cohen noted that delinquent
behavior was most often found
among lower class males and that
gang delinquency was the most
common form. He declared that
all children seek social status.
 DIFFERENTIAL OPPORTUNITY THEORY
• It was advocated by Richard Cloward and Lloyd
Ohlin.
• Delinquency is the result of the great disparity
between what youths are taught to want and what
is actually available to them.
• Youths who join a delinquent subculture want to
achieve success, but since their legitimate means
are blocked, they turn to illegitimate means in the
form of delinquency, and eventually, crime.
 SOCIAL CONTROL THEORY

• Ivan Nye
• He focuses on the family.
• He believes that delinquency is natural,
conformity, on the other hand, is not all natural
 Three types of Social Control
• a. Internal – a child’s conscience
develops as he grows older.
• b. Direct – it is what most people think
of when they hear the word control.
• c. Indirect Control – it is exercised
through a person’s affection for parents
and other conventional figures.
 TRAVIS HIRSCHI’S THEORY

• He presented the most recent, and most

popular, version of social control theory.
• He mentioned four ties to society:
• a. Attachment
• b. Commitment
• c. Involvement
• d. Belief
 NEUTRALIZATION THEORY

• It was advocated by Gresham Sykes

and David Matza.
• Matza proposed that one becomes
free from delinquent acts through
the use of techniques of
neutralization.
 Five major techniques of
neutralization:

• 1. Denial of responsibility –
juveniles may deny being
responsible for the illegal act.
• 2. Denial of injury – delinquents
believe that even though what they
have done was illegal, it was not
immoral. Therefore, no one was
really hurt by the act anyway.

67
• 3. Denial of Victim – juveniles
may deny the seriousness of
the action by claiming that
what they did was right under
the circumstances.
• 4. Condemnation of the
Condemners – youths may shift
from their own illegal behavior
to the behavior of others.

69
• 5. Appeal to higher authority –
sometimes adolescents may
justify illegal behavior by claiming
that they committed the act for
someone else, such as the gang,
the peer group and others.

70
 LABELING THEORIES

• It focuses on the informal and formal

applications of stigmatizing, deviant labels or
tags by society on some of its members.
• It treats such labels as both a dependent
variable (effect) and an independent variable
(cause).
 George Herbert Mean
• Self

72
 Frank Tannenbaum
• Tagging

73
 Lemert
• Secondary deviance

74
 Becker
• An act is not inherently deviant

75
 CONFLICT THEORIES

– Law represents the values deemed most important

by that segment of society with the power or
influence to have their interest translated into law.
– Law reflects those values that are considered
essential to maintaining social order and the
control of potentially threatening groups.
 Thorsten Sellin
• Sellin pointed to the distinction
between crime norms (those found
in the criminal law) and conducts
or group norms (those norms
specific to localized groups which
may or may not be consistent with
the crime norms).
Austing Turk (Theory of Criminalization)
• For Turk, criminality is essentially a status that
is conferred or ascribed by persons in
authority to individuals who engage in a
particular set of behaviors. Criminality is a
definition applied by individuals with the
power to do so.
 George Vold (Conflicting Group Theory)
• George Vold was interested in the nature of group
conflict. Vold believed that people were drawn to
groups by common interest. These groups will over
time, come into conflict with one another over
competing vested interests. Such conflict become
translated into criminal laws reflecting the desires of
those groups with greater power to control or regulate
weaker competing groups. In general, minority groups,
the poor, and the young are unable to influence
legislation, and consequently many of their behaviors,
which are viewed as threatening in some way to more
powerful groups, will be defined as criminals.
 Karl Marx and Frederick Engels
Social Class Conflict Theory
• Karl Marx and Frederick Engels argued
that the character of every society is
determined by its particular mode of
economic production
• Elite would want to continue to
dominate
 William Bonger – Capitalism Theory

•Bonger saw modern capitalist

society as divided into two
classes:
–Ruling class
–Ruled class
FAMILY, COMMUNITY AND THE CRIMINAL WORLD

• 1. The Corporate Model

• Father is the Chief Executive Officer.
Mom, the operating officer who
implements Dad’s policy and manages
the Staff (children), who in turn have
privileges and responsibilities based on
their seniority.
• 2. The Team Model
• Dad is the head coach; mom is the chief of
the training table and head cheerleader. The
children, suffering frequent performance
anxiety, play by the rules and stay in shape
with conformity calisthenics. In the team
family, competition is the name of the game
and winning is everything.

83
• 3. The Military Model
• Dad’s the general. Mom always on guard duty
with a special assignment to the nurse corps
when needed. Rank justifies arbitrary behavior.
Sympathy is for softies. Discipline is all. Unruly
children are sent to the stockade. Insubordinate
wives risk dishonorable discharge. Punishment is
swift and sadism is called character building.
• 4. The Boarding School Model
• Dad, the rector, or headmaster, is in charge
of training strong minds and bodies. Mom,
the dorm counselor, overseas the realm and
emotion, illness, good works, and
bedwetting. The children are dutiful
student. The parents of course, have
nothing left to learn, theirs is but to teach
and test.

85
• 5. The Theatrical Model
• Dad, the producer, also plays the role of the
Father. Mom, the stage manager, doubles in
part of Mother. Children, the stagehands,
also act the roles of girls and boys.

86
 Single Parent Families
• 1. Single-parents can less effectively supervise their
children simply because there is only one parent
rather than two, consequently, their children are
more likely to come into contact with delinquent
influences.
• 2. Specific to single mother, suggesting that the
mother gives the adolescent a greater say in what he
or she can do, thus reducing control over the youth.
 Family Effect
• The premise is that children who are raised in
supportive, affectionate, and accepting
environments tend to become self-aware adults
who can formulate their own long-term goals and
can successfully pursue socially and economically
fulfilling lives. In contrast, children of harsh,
unloving, overly critical, and authoritarian parents
often become self-absorbed as adults. Their
impulsiveness can result in violence and substance
abuse.
• The Seven Rules of Parenting
• 1. Notice what the child is doing.
• 2. Monitor it over long periods.
• 3. Model social skill behavior.
• 4. Clearly state house rules.
• 5. Consistently provide sane punishment for
transgression.
• 6. Provide reinforcement for conformity.
• 7. Negotiate disagreement so that conflicts and
crises do not escalate
 Physical Abuse and Neglect
• Abuse can either be physical (which includes
sexual) or mental, however because of the
difficulties with documenting mental abuse, and
physical abuse. As children grow into adults,
they remember the rule: if you love someone,
you may hit them for their own good. Once
hitting is viewed as acceptable, it becomes
relatively easy to understand why there are
millions of incidents of domestic violence.
 Typology of Abusers

• 1. Mentally Disordered Abuser

• 2. Parentally incompetent abuser
• 3. Situational abuser
• 4. Accidental abuser
• 5. Sub-cultural abuser
• 6. Self-identified abuser
 Adolescence, Peers and Delinquency

• Adolescence
• Adolescence has different meanings and
definitions, depending on whether it is
approached from biological,
psychological, socio-cultural,
psychological or historical viewpoint.
• A. Biological View
• Puberty introduces some dramatic and
obvious changes: genital and shoulder
development in boys, menstruation and
breast and hip development in girls and
others.

93
• B. Psychological View
• They characterized this period of life as a
turbulent, emotional one, filled with storm
and stress, brought on by the various
biological changes of puberty. It was
concluded that adolescents in general suffer
from rather serious problems: “emotional
volatility, need for immediate gratification,
impaired reality testing, and in-difference to
the world at-large.
 THE JUVENILE JUSTICE SYSTEM
• Juvenile diversion programs have been created to
divert youth from their early encounters with the
juvenile court system. These programs involve a
suspension of formal criminal or juvenile justice
proceedings against an alleged offender, and the
referral of that adolescent to a treatment or care
program.
Who undergoes intervention?

96
Who undergoes diversion?

97
Suspension of service of sentence?

98