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NCJRS Abstract

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NCJ Number:	72234

Title:	Critique of the Logical and Psychological Arguments in the Pseudosociological Theory Purporting To Explain Crime With Such Statements as 'Sociocultural Changes and New Forms of Juvenile Delinquency'

Journal:	Lavoro neuropsichiatrico Volume:60 Issue:3 Dated:(1977) Pages:37-50

Author(s):	C Citterio

Date Published:	1977

Page Count:	14

Format:	Article

Language:	Italian

Country:	Italy

Annotation:	Attempts to find universally valid explanations for crime patterns are doomed to failure, because crimes are as different as their perpetrators and their causes are not susceptible to generalizations.

Abstract:	The statement that current sociocultural changes are the general cause of new forms of juvenile delinquency is untenable for logical, historical, and existential reasons. All young people are living through the current sociocultural changes, but only some young people commit antisocial acts. Although criminology, as a branch of social psychology, is not expected to produce logical arguments, only descriptive statements unencumbered by causal inferences, it need not be doomed to tautological, i.e., trivial arguments. There must be other reasons for the antisocial acts committed by today's young people besides current sociocultural changes, because young people have been behaving in the same way since history began. For example, rebellion to authority is not new, only today's embodiments of authority are different from those of Ancient Rome and the Middle Ages. Every historical period produces individuals whose attitude towards their contemporary ethical and existential values is relative: they accept values that coincide with their own real or perceived, interests, and distort or reject all others. Crime causes are not to be sought in society, but in people and in the ways in which people interact with their society. Even drug abuse and gang crimes are new only in a marginal sense; in reality they are minor variations of age-old phenomena. --in Italian.

Index Term(s):	Crime displacement; Crime patterns; Cultural influences; Juvenile delinquency factors; Nonbehavioral correlates of crime; Social conditions; Socioculture; Socioeconomic causes of delinquency



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