Juvenile delinquency is defined as “failure to follow the law by a young person or group, the act which labels young people as deviant or delinquent” (Open University, 2020). Since Juvenile Delinquency is multifaceted, this essay will look at two social science approaches, sociological and psychological, to understand juvenile delinquency whilst reviewing the similarities and differences between these approaches. On the psychological approach, it will explore Eysenck’s Theory of personality, the Cambridge study of delinquent development, and the Integrated Cognitive Antisocial Potential theory (ICAP), and the sociological approach will analyze the theories of Howard Becker, Stanley Cohen, and Stuart Hall.

Psychological approaches look at what makes some individuals behave in a deviant manner and not others. Psychologist, Hans Eysenck’s developed a theory which links personality to deviant or criminal behavior (Harverd and Clarke, 2014), this theory helped in explaining why and how we are different from others and link criminal behavior to a certain personality, he put forth three traits to explain our individuality, these traits are Extraversion, Neuroticism, and Psychoticism. Each of these traits has dualistic outcomes, High and Low, the structure simply allows an individual to answer ‘yes’ or ‘no’ to set of questions to determine which personality they are categorized to. Through this research, Eysenck was able to determine which personality type was more likely to behave in a deviant way and therefore commit crimes compares to others. To summarize Eyneck’s theory, the majority of those who scored higher on the psychoticism scale were more likely to be criminals, he also believes that there was a biological basis for personality and that extraversion and neuroticism related to arousal from the nervous system. (Harverd and Clarke, 2014, p 252). Furthermore Eysenck proposed that there is a link between personality and antisocial behavior, and this is due to the experience we have as a child and our upbringing, this theory was also supported by the studies conducted by Center and Kemp (2002) using children and adolescents, their findings from this study shows that those who were classed as antisocial did in fact scored high on the EPQ questionnaire.

The Cambridge study of delinquent development was a longitudinal study led by David Farrington, this study looked at 411 males from the age of 8, up to the age of 48. This study was done to examine the cause of antisocial behaviour in a group of children over a long period of time. The outcome of the study showed that of those 411 participants, 1/3 of them had been convicted of a criminal offence by the age of 32 and rose to 41% when the men were surveyed at 48 years. (Harverd and Clarke, 2014). Prof. John Muncie summerized that this research help in identifying future criminality using different risk factors such as low intelligent, poor, and antisocial parents, and also environmental factors such as like-minded peers, delinquent school and unemployment moreover, this research showed that 6% of the chronic offenders shared common childhood characteristics. Prof. John Muncie also believed that the traits of deviant or antisocial behaviour can be identified as early as age 10 and this research can be used on a global scale to understand juvenile delinquency (Open Unievrsity,2020). Farrington further went into developing The integrated Cognitive Antisocial Potential Theory (ICAP), this is used to explain the behaviour of a deviant individual and more importantly the Antisocial potential (AP). This theory suggests that there are short- and long-term factors for AP. Just as the Cambridge study, ICAP looks at risk factors which may influence someone to go from low AP to High AP, furthermore Farrington (2003) suggested that those who are at most risk from offending can benefit and be prevented by some intervention and cognitive-behavioural skill training. (Open University, 2020)