For many years now, excessive drinking has been among the main symptoms of social pathology in Poland. Also the fact is beyond any doubt that drinking is strongly related to crime: it is ussually found in over a half of offences known to the police committed by adults.
The problem of drinking also plays an important part in the process of juvenile demoralization and delinquency. This fact was noticed by the legislator who, in the Act of October 26, 1982 on proceedings in cases of juveniles, situated drinking among the symptoms of demoralization.
Among the juveniles found quality of offences, the proportion of those who drink alcohol is quite large, the offenders’ actual age considered. In recent years, that proportion has been over 11,0% of all juvenile delinquents. There are also among the juveniles found quality of offences those who committed acts prohibited by law while under the influence of alcohol.
In recent years, the proportion of, such juveniles has been over 5,0% and, shows an upward trend. There is among the excessively drinking juvenile delinquents a decided majority of boys, whose proportion has always been over 91,0% in the last 20 years.
The paper reports on a national empirical study of two groups of boys born in 1959. The first group consisted of 100 respondents who committed as juveniles at least one offence while under the influence of alcohol. The other group which also consisted of 100 persons (the control group) were boys selected from among the juveniles delinquents who committed offences but did not drink any alcohol before that act.
The source of data on the two groups of respondents were: court files; records of implementation of the educational or corrective measures applied by the court, files of criminal cases for offences committed by those persons as adults; questionnaires sent out to sobering-up stations; as well as standarized interviews with the respondents themselves.
The study has shown a number of differences between juveniles who commit offences under the influence of alcohol and the remaining juvenile delinquents. The main such differences are as follows:
Different types of delinquency in the broad sense:
‒ offences committed under the influence of alcohol were frequently not the first offences of the examined juveniles (44,0% of cases, as compared to 7,0% in the control group);
‒ such offences were usually committed at the age of 15‒16 (93,0%), that is rather late in the juvenile’s career, at the threshold of statutory age:
‒ the offences committed by the first group were decidedly more aggressive and dangerous for the life and health of their victims than those committed by the control group;
‒ nearly 50,0% of the offences committed under the influence of alcohol were commitied in the streets (control group ‒ 39,3%);
‒ the juveniles who committed offences under the influence of alcohol were acting alone nearly 30 times more often than the remaining juvenile deliquents.
In the case of boys who committed offences under the influence of alcohol, their state of health, family situation, and ‒ consequently ‒ also scholastic achievements were inferior to those in the control group:
‒ as few as 67,0% of boys in the first group were brought up in complete families (control group ‒ 82,0%); what is more, in 52,3% of those families disturbed functioning was found which was due to: alcoholism, excessive drinking, serious chronic diseases, disablement, mental disorders, delinquency or prostitution of one or both parents; thus as few as about one-third of the families of juveniles who committed offences under the influence of alcohol were fully efficient educational milieu;
‒ 69,0% of the boys who committed offences under the influence of alcohol were educationally neglected by their parents (control group ‒ 53,0%);
‒ 44,0% of the boys who commiited offences under the influence of alcohol (as compared to 25,0% in the control group) had as children suffered from serious diseases that affected their psycho-physical development, organic lesions or diseases of the central nervous system, or slight or minor degrees of mental deficiency;
‒ 7,0% of the boys who committed offences under the influence of alcohol did not go to school despite the fact that education is compulsory at their age (control group – 2%), and 58,0% (70,7% of those who did go to school) were educationally retarded by one to four years (control group – 51,0% that is 52,6% of the school-goers);
The degree of social maladjustment was much higher in the boys who committed offences under the influence of alcohol:
‒ nearly a half of juveniles in that group were recidivists (44,0%, as compared to as few as 7,0% in the control group);
‒ 65,0% of the boys who drank (that is, by about one-third more than among all juvenile delinqents) were cigarette smokers, and had started smoking long before their first contacts with alcohol;
‒ although the number of juveniles who ran away from home was similar in both groups, those who committed offences under the influence of alcohol did that more often and frequently drank alcohol while vagrant;
‒ 85,0% of boys in the first group (by about 20,0% more than among all juvenile delinquents) used to run the streets unsupervised, 79,0% with demoralized friends:
‒ as few as 5,0% of juveniles who committed offences under the infleunce of alcohol showed no symptoms of social maladjustment, other than those offences (23,0% among all juvenile delinquents), and at least three such symptoms were found in 69,0% (45,0% among all juvenile delinquents).
In sum, the group of boys who had committed offences under the influence of alcohol in childhood was in many respects „worse'', and frequently much „worse'' than the control group selected from among all juvenile delinquents. Such boys would prove worse still were they compared with a representative sample of all Poles born in 1959.
The facts discussed above prove the truth of the statement that juveniles who commit offences under the influences of alcohol are a high risk group compared to properly socialized young persons. They should therefore be submitted to special care by the competent agencies, including in particular family courts; however, no evidence of such care could be found in the study.
