Le vol à main armée chez les mineurs

Armed robbery is rarely committed by minors, but because of the gravity of the crime, it is given considerable importance in the operations of our justice system. Since there is little data in the regard, we have investigated how such crimes, which are among the most serious, are treated by the system. We have found that these crimes are committed in an unprofessional way. From the police to the defence procedure, and going through the director of youth protection, they are dealt with fairly rapidly and in an official manner; however, the sentence is based less on the objective gravity of the crimes than on the characteristics of the minor, on his previous criminal record

La carrière criminelle : définition et prédiction

The concept of a criminal «career» is being used more and more in the recent criminological literature. This article analyzes the pertinence of explaining this concept by its specific components. To do this, the criminal activities of a sample of adolescents and a group of wards of the Montreal Court between the ages of seven and twenty-five are described (precocity, frequency, variety, gravity, aggravation, violence, duration). Two stages were detected in the criminal career, their degree of stability and paths of development. The dynamics of the criminal activity are described. Finally, the predictability of an intensification of criminal activities is analyzed. Given the high degree of stability, predictability and mobility (marked by aggravation of the criminal activity), we conclude that recourse to the concept of a criminal career is essential to a better understanding and more accurate diagnosis of the process of acting out

Pour une approche intégrative de la conduite délinquante des adolescents

During the I960's, the founders of criminology wanted to have it recognized as an autonomous discipline, not only because of its subject matter, but above all by assigning it an integrative mission. In this article, we propose to take this kind of integrative approach vis-à-vis the delinquent behaviour of adolescents. Based on a precise knowledge of the major forms of delinquent conduct, we formulate and validate a multidisciplinary theory of its emergence and development. With the aid of a typology of the delinquent, we then focus our attention on the practical implications of this knowledge of the subject and of the discovery of the mechanisms of its etiology. In this way, criminology can be shown to be both a science and multidisciplinary profession, hence integrative

Changement social et délinquance des adolescents, une analyse à la lumière des écrits de Denis Szabo

This article is about social change and it has Denis Szabo 's writings as a starting point. We compare the 1960 and 1970 affluent society delinquency with the 1980 and 1990 scarcity society delinquency. We conclude that withstanding structural and modal personality changes, the nature and the level of self-reported delinquency of adolescent did not change. We introduce the notions of homeostasis and homeoresis to explain these results

Le cycle de la violence physique : trajectoire sociale et cheminement personnel de la violence individuelle et de groupe

This article is about interpersonal physical violence. The description of the course of violent crimes in Quebec, based on official statistics and surveys, shows an increase in these crimes and in gang fighting, but the level is equivalent to that we had already known. There are a number of factors responsible for this situation — recent immigration, the reappearance of adolescent gangs and certain social changes. An analysis of interpersonal violence by means of a longitudinal study of individuals shows that it is an activity of the youth, not often repeated and of short duration, which is preceded by other criminal activities. It has been established that there is a strong continuity between agressive acts in early childhood, fighting during adolescence and violent crimes during adulthood. It has also been shown that the appearance of this type of conduct can be predicted under certain conditions. The results call for several preventive measures: the integration of young immigrants, the development of mechanisms for adolescent conviviality, support during the transition from school to the workplace and energetic control of adolescent gangs. Concerning action with regard to individuals, we discuss early discovery of persons at risk and specific types of intervention