JUVENILE DELINQUENCY OR JUVENILE CRIME
JUVENILE DELINQUENCY OR JUVENILE CRIME

Summary/Abstract: The subject matter of this paper is the concept of juvenile delinquency, its conceptual distinction from the concept of juvenile crime and other forms of juvenile deviant behaviour. The conceptual framework of a phenomenon is never a matter of purely linguistic and terminological designation because the definition of a concept has a significant impact not only on the social response of public authorities but also on the attitude of individual members of the specific society towards the phenomenon. This issue is particularly important when it comes to the socially unacceptable phenomena, such as juvenile delinquency and juvenile crime. This paper is not aimed at advocating for the specific use of one or the other legal term in the process of defining the illicit behaviour of juvenile offenders. The authors underscore that the proper application of these legal terms largely depends on the scope and extent of illicit conduct that the specific term entails and conceptually defines.

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