Crime in the subsequent adult life of former juvenile offenders. Selected aspects of the impact of political transformation in Poland on a return to delinquency by adults who were juvenile delinquents in the 1980s and 2000s

Abstract

The article presents an analysis of repeated criminal activity by minors who committed criminal acts in the 1980s and in the year 2000. On the basis of long-term follow up studies carried out on representative groups, it presents the extent and nature of this type of crime, as well as the percentage of minors who continued their criminal activity. The source of data on the basis of which the analysis was made were answers to enquiries regarding criminal records in the the National Criminal Register. The comparison of the two generations of minors and their criminal career is interesting in the context of the social, political, economic and legal reality in which they began their criminal activity. Moreover, it is interesting to what extent the political transformation that took place in Poland at the turn of the 1980s/90s translated into repeating juvenile delinquency of the two generations brought up in different social realities. The thesis proposed by us assumes that the construction of a deviant identity is connected with a weakening in the social ties characteristic of the phenomenon of anomie, which accompanies sudden changes in our surrounding reality.

Keywords

• juvenile
• crime
• long-term follow up studies
• developmental criminology
• life course criminology
• return to crime
• nieletni
• przestępczość
• badania katamnestyczne
• kryminologia rozwojowa
• kryminologia drogi życiowej
• powrotność do przestępstwa