Knowledge of the Law: The Disadvantaged Delinquent? *

Abstract

There is evidence to suggest that labelled delinquents are disadvantaged because they lack social survival skills. The present study examines the proposition that labelled delinquents are disadvantaged because they have a poorer knowledge of the law. A 33-item multiple-choice questionnaire covering a wide range of offence and police encounter situations was administered to 221 institutional adolescents (labelled group) while 205 school students provided the comparison non-institutional group (non-labelled). There were two general findings. First, the non-institutional group was significantly better than the institutional group, but all the adolescents showed a disturbingly limited knowledge of many laws. Second the superior performance of the non-institutional group was not “ali-or-none”: on some items the institutional group were superior. The findings were discussed in terms of differing experiential background and the social disadvantage of the institutional adolescents.