Juvenile Delinquency
- Author:
PEARCE, M.A., M.D., F.R.C.P.E., D.P.M.
Co-Director, Institute for the Scientific Treatment of Delinquency; Hon. Psychiatrist, Queen Elizabeth Hospital for Children ; Hon. Physician, Tavistock Clinic Delinquency is not in itself a disease but is only an indication of some mental variation in the individual. That delinquency occurs means more than simply something the matter with the individual ; it signifies also some malady of society. There is a tendency among some workers to regard social conditions as embracing the whole causation, but to adopt such a point of view is to be in error. There are nearly always several causal factors, as almost any delinquency points to a problem, both in the individual and in the environment in which he lives. There are many ways in which the psychiatric social worker is able to help in the treatment of delinquent situations and in the prevention of their development ; in fact, her greater opportunity is perhaps in the latter field. All psychiatric social workers in their day-to-day work deal with family situations which may very well lead to delinquency in one or other of the children.
The main varieties of delinquent conduct are sexual misconduct, acts of aggression, stealing, truancy from school and running away from home. Each case presents an individual and unique problem and must be approached as such. The great majority of delinquents come from the slums. The social factors are protean, and, as such conditioning circumstances are beyond the control of the child and originate in defects of society, there is a danger of assuming that the child himself is hardly part of the problem. However, only a minority of the children who are exposed to such stresses do in fact become delinquent. With delinquency as with many other medical problems it is often far less important to know just what is the nature of the disturbed behaviour or of the disease process than it is to recognize just what kind of person is afflicted thereby. It is only by such a comprehensive approach to the problem that any success in remedial or preventive measures will be achieved. As a corrective to any tendency to attribute all delinquency to environmental factors it is well to recall the work of Healy and Bronner. These workers made a comparative study of a series of delinquent children and their non-delinquent siblings. One cannot do better than quote the following from their report : ” Unsatisfying human relationships form obstructions to the flow of normal urges, desires and wishes in the channels of socially acceptable activities. The deflected current of feelings of being inadequate, deprived or thwarted in ego or love satisfactions, turns strongly into urges for substitutive satisfactions. The obstructive relationships are mainly those within the family group where the attitudes and behaviour of parents and others are influenced by their own personal dissatisfactions. Ideas of delinquency are derived from companions, the observation of special temptations, reading, etc. These sources of ideas constitute environmental pressures. Through the acceptance of such ideas the deflected portion of the current of feelings and activities finds expression in delinquency. Underlying all these are current attitudes, beliefs, local and group ideologies?the ideas and practices of asocial individualism. These in turn are stimulated by local conditions and by early observed exploitations, unfairnesses or dishonesties in business, law, politics, officialdom.”
Healy and Bronner also stress the fact that ethical concepts which have no personification have little force in the lives of young people. Such personification is dependent on the emotional tie-up with the parents and where this is inadequate the character tends to be ill-developed. As one digests the full implication of these conclusions by Healy and Bronner?and it is to be remembered that they are based on very careful and controlled observation and research?the scope for valuable work by social workers will become quite obvious to the reader. The psychiatric social worker in her routine social surveys will, if she has the eyes * Our fourth article on special problems.?Ed. with which to see, come across many situations in which one or other child in a family is subject to just such frustrations, the ultimate response to which may very well be delinquency, which in itself may sometimes end in a persistently antisocial, criminal character and personality. Though the whole problem at times seems so vast that one may feel somewhat overwhelmed by it, every individual action taken to relieve such miseries is well worth while.
A more detailed discussion of the social factors significant in delinquency can now be made. Dr. Emanuel Miller classifies gross environmental anomalies as follows :
Delinquent ” habits ” of a group.
Economic and social degradation.
Change of mores?evacuation and immigration and failure to adapt.
(4) Educational environment unsuited to certain dullards, superiors, and neurotic types. (5) Developmental, psychically-abnormal patterns due to gross disturbances of parent-child relationships, etc.
Ire S. Wile considered maladjustments in the happiness and behaviour of children to have grown out of customs, laws, regulations and ordinances, rather than wholly out of ignorance, misunderstanding and inherent frailties. In his view the main general sociological causes fall under the three headings of social sanction, social tolerance and social indifference. I think the reader will agree that though differently expressed these two writers are very much in accord in this matter, and that simply to amend a variety of specific faults in the social setting without considering the underlying basic social defects is much the same as treating symptoms in sick persons rather than attacking the basic disease processes. This does not mean that it is not useful and indeed essential to deal with those specific environmental stresses in each case ; in fact it is often very important to do so ; but if the incidence of delinquency is to be reduced it is necessary also to deal with the larger underlying causes.
In investigating specific environmental factors and their significance in delinquency it is best to begin with the home life and to work outwards from this. With delinquents it is much more common to find a broken home than with non-delinquents. All too often it is the internal family situation which is seriously at fault, e.g. divorce, desertion, stepparents, illegitimacy, cruelty, defective discipline and example, war separation and war reunion. Poverty is also very prevalent, causing overcrowding and hence sexual temptations ; and hunger which leads to other temptations ; and lack of opportunities for play and other outlets for the normal energy of the child, leading in some cases to compensatory gratification in delinquency.
The neighbourhood may be a major factor. Certain districts are much more heavily loaded with delinquency than others. Such districts are those in which there is much opportunity of contact with vulgarity, vice and crime ; where bad companions and evil example abound ; where no recreational facilities exist; where temptations such as pin-table saloons and the display of attractive but honestly unobtainable goods abound. Another factor in some districts is the current phenomenon of the landlord who will have children in his socalled furnished rooms only under protest. Such landlords insist that children must be kept entirely quiet, failing which the family will be evicted. In a case recently dealt with a mother had to take her child, not more than three years old, out of the house every day before 8.30 in the morning, and she was not allowed to return until six o’clock at night. The alternative was eviction. This is not an isolated case. A series of cases have been seen in which the children have to bottle-up all their natural energy and to keep quite quiet all day long, resulting in a variety of serious psychiatric reactions. They are not allowed to run about in the house, and in fact in many cases boots have to be removed in order to insure quiet, the constant threat hanging over the parents being eviction. Many difficulties arise in school life and the common situations requiring exploration are the personal relationships with the teachers and the other children, and the success or otherwise which the child has with his school work. The other common miseries of school life are all too frequent among delinquent children ; a common example is inferior clothing. Most children who play truant are either unhappy or bored at school. Non-co-operation of parents with teachers is not unknown, and the psychiatric social worker can do a very great deal to improve such relationships. Many delinquents have as a background a bad employment record, having too often got into dead-end jobs with all their resultant frustration. The attitude of many delinquents towards hard work is often very poor and at the present time this is linked up with the fact that during the war years many youngsters were able to earn very high wages in return for very little service. In some cases their attitude to dishonesty and slackness is not helped by the employers who, when adolescent employees embezzle funds, e.g. the message boy who collects money as he goes on his rounds?do not bother to take any action about it One must not condemn such employers out of hand, as to take action may very well mean a serious loss of time on the part of the employer, who frequently has to spend one or two days in Court, for which he gets no compensation. Employers often feel that the loss of a pound or two is a smaller hardship than the dislocation of their work by the loss of so much time. Nevertheless, such failure to discharge their social responsibilities is to be deplored. The black market too provides much temptation for children, who are enticed into it by adult operators. This applies to a large number of delinquents, and constitutes a real social problem.
The rapid decline in religious training and religious interest inevitably means a less healthy conscience. In many delinquents it is very common to find an almost total lack of any religious knowledge, interest, or belief. When one comes to consider the attitude of society in practice to lawbreaking, birth control, and illicit sexual relationships, as is so clearly apparent in certain sections of the press and entertainment world, one cannot but conclude that such attitudes exercise an adverse influence over the development of socially healthy consciences.
This admittedly superficial survey of social factors commonly involved is by no means complete, and many other instances of conditions and attitudes in and of the community will occur to the reader. In considering the problem of delinquency it is at least equally important also to study the children who become delinquent. Juvenile delinquents are in many ways relatively inferior to their nondelinquent brethren. This inferiority may be physical or intellectual and sometimes both. Frequently it is slight but none the less significant. Inferiorities are sometimes constitutional, but perhaps usually the result of faulty nurture. Such faulty nurture is in itself due to various social deficiencies. Examples of such physical inferiorities are poor bodily development often complicated by old rickets, and specific defects such as poor sight and hardness of hearing. Intellectually delinquents by and large are of lower intelligence than nondelinquents. Many delinquents also appear constitutionally to lack stability of temperament. Such disability prevents the person affected from being able to compete on equal terms with his better endowed or better developed rivals. The ways in which such a principle can work in human relationships and activities may profitably be left to the reader to tease out for himself. Certain classic types of reaction to any such disability are that it may be regarded by its possessor as something calling for compensation ; or as a reason for giving up altogether in face of difficulties ; or as a useful attribute which can be exploited. Some of the ways in which delinquency can be the product of such a situation will be apparent to every psychiatric social worker.
In each case it is essential to make a careful physical survey of the child, not only to determine if any disease processes are present, but also to assess the functional capacity of the individual. Similarly, one cannot get far in any problem of delinquency without knowing the level of intelligence and of educational attainment of the child in trouble. It is well to remember that an important though very small group of cases of disturbed conduct are the direct result of physical disease, such as encephalitis lethargica and epilepsy ; though the presence of the latter in any case does not mean that it is necessarily the main cause. It is important to keep one’s eyes open for possible mental deficiency, as all too frequently this condition is for the first time discovered only after a considerable career of crime. Where mental deficiency is pronounced, it will probably over-rule all the other causal factors with regard to disposal. In the final analysis delinquency does seem to be dependent on a trait of character, and unless this delinquent trait of character can be modified the conduct will not change. It is useful therefore to view delinquency as due to a trait of character which may be the result of various circumstances. One important trait is that which is dependent essentially on a state of mental deficiency, and the treatment will be that of mental deficiency. For example, many a child plays truant from school and then gets into all kinds of secondary delinquent habits because, being mentally deficient, he cannot understand or enjoy his work. The proper treatment may then be classification as educationally subnormal under the Education Act of 1944 whereby he will receive suitable education either at a special day school, or, if other conditions point to it, in a special residential school for such children. Very often, with such treatment the delinquent trait of character disappears.
In quite a large number of cases the delinquent trait of character develops because of the child’s instability of temperament ; this is often referred to as a temperamental character trait. The very fact that this is the main underlying cause of the delinquency will suggest to the social worker the lines of treatment necessary. It will also be obvious that no sudden or dramatic result from treatment can be looked for in such cases. One has to rely mainly on prolonged careful training and re-education, often supported by a considerable measure of external supervision and control. Such cases may require to be bolstered up for many years to come. The classic example of this is the boy or girl who gets into trouble time and time again and who seems to be unable to learn from experience or to look ahead, qualities typical of the psychopathic personality. Many such children end up in approved schools where they often behave fairly well and get along all right. Far too often, however, on being set loose in the world without continued supervision and guidance these individuals quickly relapse into delinquency. This particular group, as all psychiatric social workers well know, constitutes one of the large problems confronting society. It does look as if special provision will have to be made for the proper supervision and control of such persons. It should be observed that punishment is unlikely to have any prolonged deterrent effect on such individuals. A third delinquent character trait develops from the influences of the environment, e.g. bad companions leading a child into bad habits. It is in this third group of cases that there lies the main scope for sharp disciplinary punishment, and one’s personal point of view is that corporal punishment administered by the child’s parents or by the school teacher may be a useful remedy. Sometimes a short separation from home which is clearly recognized by the child as a punishment, or the application of the principle of restitution will be effective. It is important also to provide such children with really good alternative social outlets ; such measures as club membership and adequate recreational facilities are helpful. In this particular group the imaginative psychiatric social worker can play a very useful part.
In those cases where the trait of character is the direct or indirect outcome of some organic disease, the treatment is obviously that of the latter, of which the conduct disorder is only a symptom.
Another important variety is known as the reaction character trait. In these cases the person acquires a delinquent anti-social character as a result of suppressing the opposite tendency. An example of this is where a child who is denied affection and love so persistently and severely that he gets to the point when he cannot stand such deprivation any longer, will react to this by putting all thought of it out of his conscious mind and by becoming independent and self-sufficient. In order to keep the unsatisfied tendency properly suppressed he has to maintain this attitude of independence ; hence it is very persistent and rather overdone. He becomes hostile to everyone and very much against all law and order. Such persons have little or no feeling for others ; they are lonely and up against the world. Their anti-social character is very apparent to the community as is only to be expected with such a mental mechanism ; and they have no conscience with regard to what they do. Once this transformation has taken place it is very difficult or even impossible to reverse it. In order to react to early adversity in so strong a fashion, these persons require to have a certain robustness of temperament which, had it only been canalized in socially useful ways, would have made them into really good citizens with considerable qualities of leadership. They are also usually of good intelligence. The psychiatric social worker will come across many children exposed to just the kind of deprivation which may be the stimulus for the development of this particular type of reaction. If such cases are encountered it is most important to take steps to correct the unfortunate family situation or to provide opportunities for substitute gratification of the thwarted tendency, usually the need for affection. In this way the hard core of persistent, clever, adult criminals will be reduced. A classic instance of this would be the following. A school boy is not only unloved but actually despised and hated by his father. There is a younger brother who is the apple of father’s eye. Father’s hatred is carried to the extent of severely thrashing the boy at least once a week as a routine. The boy for some years does his utmost to win father’s regard, but gradually becomes discouraged and, after going through a phase of despondency and suppressing his yearnings for parental affection, turns not only against his parents but against all figures of authority. He may then start stealing cars and get into trouble with the police. Gradually he may become more and more delinquent in his conduct, and may end up in Court on some charge of a very grave type, such as armed robbery, coupled with rape. The importance of the mental mechanism underlying many such histories as this indicates the need to identify such situations in the early stages. Unhappily, by the time they reach the hands of the psychiatrist these people are on a par with so many cases of cancer coming to the surgeon in that they are beyond any treatment. The best one can do very often is to provide prolonged training and re-education as in Borstal ; but unless someone succeeds in winning the affection and devotion of the sufferer, for such he is, all this is of little avail. In some cases the old suppressed longing will emerge into the person’s awareness to the extent of his becoming, for no reason known to himself, very melancholy and depressed. That some such persons commit suicide is not to be wondered at.
Another important trait of character is known as a psycho-neurotic character trait. In such cases the mental mechanism at work is that of a psychoneurosis and the delinquency is due to the emergence of what is repressed. The outstanding feature of such cases is that the disturbed conduct is quite foreign to the normal day-to-day character and personality of the individual. The classic example is the best pupil in the school who is detected stealing from his teacher or from the other children. Very often’ the delinquency seems to be without any immediately useful purpose, and indeed it may be so designed that detection is inevitable and punishment ensues. These are the cases in which psychotherapy is the correct treatment. It is by dealing with and clearing up the psycho-neurosis that the conduct disturbance will disappear and the unconscious delinquent trait of character be eradicated. Finally, there is what is called a psychotic character trait. In these cases the delinquent person is suffering from a psychosis, usually schizophrenia, and his usual conduct is only a part of his disordered mental state. Treatment is obviously that of the psychosis. This is a small group but one in which the experience of the psychiatric social worker, who may be the first trained person to meet the case, will be very helpful as the sooner identified the sooner remedied.
When one considers the practical measures which one can employ in dealing with delinquent persons, one quickly finds that they are rather limited in scope. The Juvenile Court can make a variety of disposals. For example the Court can place an accused person on probation, and this in many cases is sufficient. The work of the probation officer and the psychiatric social worker overlap to some extent, and the more they co-operate and get to know one another the more fruitful will be their measures in dealing with their case material. The whole range of residential disposal with the Courts can apply, from foster homes and approved hostels to Home Office schools and Borstal, have their uses in different cases.
The psychiatric social worker may find it necessary occasionally to advise parents to bring a child before the Juvenile Court as being ” beyond control This is reserved, of course, only for cases where the situation cannot really be satisfactorily resolved without recourse to the Court. The enlightened magistrate may then be able to order the type of disposal required. To deal with all the weapons which the Court has at hand would occupy far too much space, and in any case the social worker will discover all she needs to find out about these matters if only she will make the necessary contact with the probation Officers in her district.
The Education Act of 1944 has also improved the facilities for the adequate treatment of some of these conditions. In particular, the class of problem child known as the ” maladjusted pupil ” has been recognized. Provision for special hostels at which such children can reside and have the necessary psychiatric treatment is made in the Act, though many local authorities have been rather slow to do anything about this.
Perhaps the main outstanding problem for which practically nothing has yet been done is that of the large group of psychopathic persons, i.e. the temperamental character trait cases, a problem which has not yet even been fully thought out, and certainly for which there is as yet but little adequate constructive provision. In their work psychiatric social workers will have many opportunities of urging forward the growing edge of public opinion and interest in this as in other social problems. The local telephone directory will usually give the address of the probation officers under the heading of Probation Service. The probation officer has in his possession all the information about special hostels, clubs and other facilities. The Institute for the Scientific Treatment of Delinquency, 8 Bourdon Street, Davies Street, London, W.l, has carried out much research into various problems of delinquency and is a useful source of information on any problems related with this field of work.
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