Excerpt from An Experimental Study of Abnormal Children: With Special Reference, to the Problems of Dependency and Delinquency

Definition of dependency and delinquency - The two most important terms used in this report are dependency and delin quency; and that there may be no uncertainty as to the exact sense in which the terms are used, it will be necessary to define the present usage of the terms as clearly as is possible. The term delinquent will herein be applied to: (1) all such children as have actually violated any state law or city' ordinance; (2) all such as associate with vicious companions, absent themselves from home, or are growing up in circumstances'that make it highly probable that they themselves will lead vicious or criminal lives. Dependent will be used in referring to those children who have no proper homes or guardians, where financial depen deney is virtually the whole problem. A child will be called delinquent whenever it has acquired such knowledge or habits as make it an undesirable companion for other children, and dependent only where there are present no such traits to be over come, and where the child has shown no marked abnormality of character, that makes it an undesirable companion for other children. By making use of such a distinction as this it will not be difficult to make a division into the two classes, in which the necessary care to be provided will be clearly of a different type. This terminology is in the main in accordance with the definitions of dependencv and delinquency which occur in most of the juvenile court laws in this country. A few of the older laws still adhere to the Old terminology, including under the heading delinquency only such children as have vio lated statutes or ordinances or are incorrigiblepleaving out of consideration the large number of children who, because of bad environment or inherent anti-social tendencies, are in serious danger of coming to lead criminal or dissolute lives. On the-other hand, in the juvenile court law enacted in California in the term neglected child was introduced, to refer to the same class of children as is ordinarily regarded as dependent.

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