Rejection by the Social Order and Delinquent Orientation ‡

Abstract

It has been argued that once adolescents are labelled as delinquent, they are systematically rejected by the social order. Thus they should develop antagonism towards the criminal justice system, increased tolerance for proscribed activities, and short-sighted hedonism. These assertions were formulated as null hypotheses, and a comparison of the attitudes of delinquents and non-delinquents, through semantic differential technique, resulted in failure to accept the null hypotheses. Thus, the existence of the predicted attitudes were verified empirically, but it was pointed out that their origins must be confirmed through longitudinal research.