“Adolescence is Preeminently the Criminal Age”
| Date | 01 October 1986 |
| Author | Peter MacKay |
| DOI | 10.1177/0032258X8605900410 |
| Published date | 01 October 1986 |
| Subject Matter | Article |
PETER
MACKAY, B.A., M.Phil.,
Detective Constable, Bedfordshire Police.
IIADOLESCENCE IS PRE-
EMINENTLY
THE
CRIMINAL
AGE"
"The young people of today love luxury. They have bad
manners, they scoff at authority and lack respect for their elders.
Children nowadays are real tyrants, they no longer stand up
when their elders come into the room where they are sitting, they
contradict their parents, chat together in the presence of adults,
eat gluttonously and tyrannize their teachers".
(Socrates) (Brake, 1980, p. I).
It
seems
that
young people have always attracted criticism from
their elders. They are seen as a distinct social group posing major
social problems. Such a view has generated a vast amount of
investigation by
both
academics and the popular press. This has
resulted in the post-war years with the adolescent working-class
male being portrayed as a "folk devil". As Brake (1980) notes, the
growth industry of youth as a social problem has involved many
theories, including psychological, sociological and socio-
psychological.
It
is the purpose of this article to examine the term
"adolescence" and how it is concerned (if at all) with criminality.
Many believe
that
the "problem" concerning young people is a
relatively new one, however Kiell (1967) notes that over two
thousand five hundred years ago Aristotle was observing youth with
the eyes of today's parents, accusing them of lacking in self-restraint
and taking everything
too
far. We can therefore see that this
concern over young people is not a new phenomenon at all and has
a longevity far greater than is generally accepted.
The American psychologist Hall (1905) claimed that adolescence
is pre-eminently the criminal age, in order to analyze the truth of
this statement it is a requirement that the term adolescence is fully
understood. We need to question the assumption of the term in its
fullest meaning and ask, can it be applied to all youth, or is it
just
a
term to cover the various youth! subcultures found both historically
and co-contemporary?
Simmons and Wade (1984) claim
that
the first formulation of the
theory that adolescence is a period of storm and stress can be traced
as far back as the ancient Greeks and Egyptians; however, it is
generally accepted
that
the concept of adolescence in its modern
form is attributed to the French philosopher,
Jean
Jacques
Rousseau, 1762 (Simmons and Wade, 1984 and Musgrove, 1964).
348 October 1986
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