Juvenile Delinquency and Subterranean Values

Abstract

Current explanations of juvenile delinquency place a heavy stress on the delinquent’s deviance, not only with regard to his behavior but also with regard to his underlying values. It can be argued, however, that the delinquent’s values are far less deviant than commonly portrayed and that the faulty picture is due to an erroneous view of the middle-class value system. A number of supposedly delinquent values are closely akin to those embodied in the leisure activities of the dominant society. To view adolescents in general and delinquents in particular as members of the last leisure class may help us explain both the large amount of unrecorded delinquency and the occurrence of delinquency throughout the class structure.