ABSTRACT
This chapter considers the cultural factors in learning delinquent patterns of behaviour in the open community, with the social forces which lead to a boy’s first appearance in court. Much depends also upon the existence of cultural patterns of learning, the extent to which there are well-recognized patterns of apprenticeship in social relations. The delinquency-learning processes at work in the penal institution demonstrate in a concentrated but also distorted form many of the forces at work in the outside community, and any attempt to foster unlearning during detention must pay careful attention to all the forces. Everyone learns partly from personal experience and partly from watching others learn. There are well-marked cultural differences in techniques of learning and techniques of self-criticism, in the tendency to verbalization or silence. The evident difficulties of providing an unlearning framework in institutions have encouraged the view that delinquents are better treated as far as possible at liberty or with day attendance at institutions.
