Middle Class Juvenile Delinquency

Middle-class juvenile delinquency has long been a problem when asking as to why some children steal and not others, why some skip school, or why some set fires and damage property. Some theories have been improved from time to time over the years, but the last ten or fifteen years have had significant study and advancement. Officers of the juvenile courts, child welfare associations, educational bodies, and mental clinics have been vital in order to compile the large amount of data on juvenile delinquency and how it relates to gangs. One theory is the Self-Control Theory which was originally developed by criminologists Travis Hirschi and Michael Gottfredson.

Gottfredson and Hirschi believed their theory was a simple view of human behavior: "All human conduct can be understood as the selfinterested pursuit of pleasure or the avoidance of pain”. They saw crime as a way to obtain self-interested goals because it provides "immediate, easy, and short-term pleasure" Gottfredson and Hirschi, theorized the answer was in self-control. “Those with high self-control resist the immediate pleasures associated with criminal behavior. Conversely, low self-control, when coupled with
The factors which go to make up these difficult situations, together with the mental and physical conditions which influence or hinder a juvenile’s ability to adjust which leads to the causes of delinquency are very complex. Each juvenile offense is the outcome of different causes some of whose origins are from years before the criminal behavior or the offense and others whose origins are more obvious and immediate which connect the act to the delinquency. It has been shown that a different set of causes are involved in each individual case. It is impossible therefore to state the primary causes which will invariably result in any one