Discovering disorder: young people and delinquency

# Glossary

Antisocial
  A type of behaviour that lacks consideration for others and may cause harm to society or a label attached to the behaviour of some groups of young people.

Biological approach
  An approach that uses anatomical or physiological processes to try to explain behaviour, for example genetics, the nervous system or the immune system.

Cognitive processes
  These involve the higher mental processes such as thinking, planning and decision making.

Conditioning
  A form of learning by association. Behaviours that are to be desirable are rewarded and those that are not desirable are punished.

Criminal behaviour
  An act that breaks the law and can receive punishment or a behaviour that has been labelled as illegal in a particular society at a particular time.

Deviance
  Behaviour that violates (some) social norms and thus becomes labelled as deviant.

Deviancy amplification spiral
  A concept that is used to describe how public anxiety and intervention may escalate around a particular problem; and how it may also increase the behaviour that was the original cause of concern.

Delinquency
  Failure to follow the law, often referred to in relation to a young person, for example juvenile delinquency, or behaviour by some groups of young people that has been labelled as deviant and delinquent.

Disorderly
  Disturbing the public peace,oractinginan unruly manner, or behaviour that is labelled as contrary to a desired or imagined state of social order.

Folk devils
  Individuals or groups identified as threats or dangerstosocialorder, onto whom are projected a range of social anxieties, concerns and fears.

Longitudinal study
  A study of the activities or attitudes of individuals or groups of people over long periods of time.

Moral panic
  States of collective anxiety about society or social order, in which irrational or disproportionate reactions to events, acts or people are encouraged or enabled by moral entrepreneurs (politicians, journalists and others claiming to represent the public interest).

Rule of Law
  The principle that all people and institutions, including government, are subject to and accountable to the law.

OpenLearn - Discovering disorder: young people and delinquency
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