UNCOVERING THE ETIOLOGICAL ASSUMPTIONS OF THE RESPONSE TO JUVENILE DELINQUENCY IN HONG KONG
This paper highlights the profiles of juvenile crime and the responses to juvenile delinquency in Hong Kong in the last few decades. With the aid of criminological literature and policy documents, the author uncovers the underlying etiological assumptions of delinquency. The assumptions are biased in favour of the functionalist perspective. Until the publication of a recent study on the social causes of delinquency, interactionist theories seemed to have no part in explaining crime in Hong Kong. The author argues that under the dominance of the positive non-interventionist political culture in Hong Kong, the academics are prone to be conservative. This paper suggests that future research should focus on testing interactional effects among the social variables derived from the social control, strain, labelling and differential association theories. 这篇文章讨论本港青少年犯罪概念的转变及社会对青少年犯罪的对策。透过分析本港之犯罪研究及政策文件,作者发掘解释青少年犯罪的背后假设。这些假设大部份是倾向功能主义学派的。直至近年,作者才发现以互动学派的论点来解释犯罪渐被社会人士所重视。作者建议未来的研究应朝向探讨社会契约、社会压力、负面标签及朋辈关系等因素与犯罪行为的交互影响。