How the Youthful Girls have become to commit Misconducts?

Abstract

The author has studied juvenile delinquency, making it his concern to know the context of their misconducts. This research, forming a part of the program, has been focused on the delinquency of youthful girls in particular, that is, their adjustments and attitudes to family lives and social norms.

Each of the subjects has an experience of running away from home. Therefore, it seemed to be important to investigate in what state or manner she had run away, i.e. to know her life space.

The interview method and SCT were used to approach that problem. Subjects were 50 youthful girls in a juvenile detention and classification home.

Main findings are as follows.

(1) Subjects were classified into 7 types according to the structure of life space: 3 types consist of girls whose great concern is to their friend; girls of other 2 types have no interest in real social relation or have no friend; each girl belonging to 1 type has a man to depend upon; and girls of the last type have great interest in money.

(2) Relating to misconducts, these types can be classified on four different levels: girls on the first level are indulged themselves in undesirable pleasure on the basis of depending upon the family; girls on the second level fall into misconducts by losing stability in family life and other social relations; each girl on the third level acts against wishes of her family and depends upon a friend or a group supporting her; and each girl on the forth level seeks a living for herself due to lack of good understanding with her family and regards her misconducts as necessary to life.

(3) The factors which determine the degree of misconducts after running away from home seem to depend on other persons who support her or situation than herself.

(4) The factors which bring forth the distortion of social norms to her are ultimately found in family relations.