Family Disruption, Delinquent Conduct and the Effect of Subclassification

Employing seriousness of offense as a measure of delinquency, we re-examine the relationship between delinquency referral and family disruption. Information from the Juvenile and County Courts of Florida for the first four months of 1969 provided us with uniform delinquency data for 8,944 children. We compare the family situations of 5,376 of these children with the situations of children in the U.S. population in 1968. The analysis suggests (1) that children charged with delinquency live in disrupted families substantially more often than children in the general population, (2) that children referred for more serious delinquency are more likely to come from incomplete families than juveniles charged with minor offenses, and (3) that family income is a more important factor for understanding the relationship between delinquency referral and family situation than age, sex, or urban-rural residence, but that it may not be more important than race. We briefly examine the implications for alternative intervention strategies in light of these variables' interrelations. (Abstract Adapted from Source: American Sociological Review, 1972. Copyright © 1972 by the American Sociological Association) Florida Family Relations Juvenile Delinquency Juvenile Offender Delinquency Causes Late Adolescence Early Adolescence Socioeconomic Status Socioeconomic Factors 06-01