ABSTRACT
IN the prior chapter, relating to the influence on delinquency of certain elements of parental pathology (criminalism, alcoholism, emotional and physical illness, industrial incompetence), we learned that such factors are implicated in the criminogenic process not only by contributing to the formation of delinquency-related traits in children but by their malignant catalytic influence on youngsters already possessing certain traits, regardless of whether these are in themselves related to delinquency. So far in the analysis, it appears that the activation to delinquency comes from the combination of inimical social factors and the presence in children of certain traits.
