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Indiana University Studies 



The determination of juvenile delinquenc}^ depends then upon 

 the circumstances surrounding the act defined by a law which, 

 aside from actual law breaking, covers almost every species of 

 conduct which is likely to result in law breaking and criminality, 14 

 a law which is therefore capable of exercising preventive control 

 over the child. 



From the very nature of the problem any examination into 

 juvenile delinquency must include a study of the individual 

 delinquent and of the circumstances surrounding the acts of 

 delinquency for which under the law the child is brought to the 

 attention of the court. 



Crime may be defined as a violation of the laws of the state 

 carrying legal penalties. Wrongs are divided into three classes: 

 sins, offenses against God who inflicts the punishment himself; 

 vices, offenses against natural law having its own penalties; and 

 crimes, offenses against statutory law carrying legal penalties. 

 Clearly the only kind of wrongs that can be measured at present 

 are those against statutory law. Those against moral and phy- 

 sical law can be known only as manifest in violations of statutory 

 law. The use of the word "crime" in this study refers to those 

 wrongs which the law so regards and punishes. 15 



A study of crime necessarily involves two points of view: 

 that of the act committed and that of the agent committing the 

 act. In the same study the crime and the criminal may both 

 be considered without any real inconsistency provided the dis- 

 tinction between these two points of view is kept in mind. 16 

 While formerly attention of society was concentrated on the 

 crime with little regard to the agent committing it, 17 the classical 

 school of criminologists succeeded in turning attention to the 

 study of the criminal as the agent of the act of crime. Altho 

 at the present day the point has not quite been reached in adult 

 crime as in juvenile delinquency, where the theory of the law 

 declares that a criminal shall be tried and a course of treatment 

 prescribed based entirely on the relation of the individual criminal 

 to the particular environment in which he happens to be placed, 

 still the law does recognize degrees of difference in individual 

 criminals, and degrees of difference in various environments. A 

 study of crime in a community then must include a study of 



"Breckenridge and Abbott, p. 43; Mangold, p. 222; Baldwin, p. 12. 



"Boies, pp. 30, 31, 38; Wines, pp. 11, 13, 229, 249; Drahms, p. 5; Robinson, p. 3. 



"Robinson, p. 4; Boies, p. 35; Wines, p. 6. 



17 Ferrero, p. 3. 



