Factors Influencing Juvenile Delinquencies Among Juvenile
[A CASE STUDY OF BORSTAL TRAINING INSTITUTE GANMO, KWARA STATE.]

    According to Cloward – Ohlin, (1960:153), criminal sub-culture develops from the lower class neighbourhoods where the successful criminal provide juvenile the opportunities of engaging in criminal acts and, subsequently, becoming delinquents. The successful criminal in these neighbourhoods are visible and often willing to associate with juveniles and teach them the act of criminality. According to them, most often, juveniles in the lower-class neighbourhood do not have access to conventional role models refined to make them successful in life through legitimate channels. The juveniles adopt drugs and alcohol as escape from life’s difficulties.
    Clinard and Abbott (1973:187) in their research on crime in developing countries found that the:
Poverty of the lower classes prevents them from using legitimate means, such as education, to acquire valued goods, thus giving them no alternative, but to engage in illegitimate activities … the logical conclusion is that opening up avenues of educational and economic opportunity will reduce juvenile delinquency. The experience of economically developed countries, however, has been the opposite”.
    According to Albert Cohen (1955), the experiences of children and young persons, including adolescents in the slum neighbourhoods where they are growing up provides the ripe condition for delinquent subculture to develop. This implies that a delinquent subculture of the slum area is a function of socio-economic deprivations that juveniles suffer in the society. The conditions of poverty creates a monster in some individuals who bind together to form a gang of delinquent informed by a subculture of their own (Cohen, 1955: 25 – 133).
There is a disproportionate amount of official delinquent behaviour in slum neighbourhoods, which represent a protest against the norms and values of the middle class culture. Lower class youth’s become delinquents when they experience culture conflict form their incapability to achieve success in legitimate social sentences. Delinquency is a short-run, non-utilitarian, malicious, and negativistic form of activity, delinquents form gangs based on a deviant subculture which opposes the value system of the larger society (Iwarimie – Jaja, 1999:5).      
IQ levels and juvenile delinquency          
    An often cited 1977 study by Travis Hirschi and Michael Hindelang revised interest in the association between IQ and delinquency. After conducting a statistical analysis on a number of data, Hirchi and Hindelang concluded both that IQ tests are a valid predictor of intelligence and that weight of evidence is that IQ is more important than race and social class for predicting delinquent involvement. They argued that a low IQ increases the likelihood of delinquent behaviour through its effect on school performance. Youth with low IQs do poorly in school, and school failure and academic incompetence are highly related to delinquency.
    In 1926, William Healy and Augusta Bronner tested a group of delinquents in Chicago and Boston and found that 37% were subnormal in intelligence. They concluded that delinquents were five to ten, times more likely to be mentally deficient than non-delinquent boys.
    These and other early studies were embraced as proof that low IQ scores indicated potentially delinquent children and that a correlation existed between innate low intelligence and deviant behaviour.
    Studies challenging the assumption that people automatically committed delinquent acts because they had below – average IQs began to appear as early as the 1920s. John Salwson studied, 1,543 delinquent boys in New York institutions and compared them with a control group of New York City boys in 1926. He found that although 80% of the delinquents were about normal in mechanical aptitude and nonverbal intelligence. These results indicated the possibility of cultural bias in portions of the IQ tests. He found also no relationship between the numbers of arrests, the types of offence and the IQs.
Learning, Disability and Juvenile Delinquency
    Moreover, researchers have shown a link between learning disability (LD) and juvenile delinquency to buttress biological theory of juvenile delinquency. Learning disabled kids usually exhibit poor motor coordination (poor hand-eye coordination, trouble climbing stars, they are clumsy, cannot catch a ball, cannot, stay neat), have behaviour problems (lack emotional control, appear hostile, daydream a lot, and improper auditory and vocal responses (do not seem to hear, cannot differentiate sounds and noises).
    The relationship between learning disabilities and juvenile delinquency has been highlighted by studies showing that arrested and incarcerated children have a far higher LD rate than do children in the general population. While it is estimated that approximately 10% of all youths have learning disorders estimates of LD among adjudicated delinquents range from 26% to 73%.
    Charles Murray (1976), writing in a widely read federally sponsored study, offered two possible explanations of the link between learning disability and delinquency. One view, known as the susceptibility rationale, argues that the link is caused by certain side effects of learning disabilities, such as impulsiveness, poor ability to learn from experience, and inability to take social cues. In contrast, the school failure rationale assumes that the frustration caused by the LD child’s poor school performance will lead to a negative self-image and acting out behaviour.