Juvenile delinquency

In sociology, juvenile delinquency is defined as the "antisocial acts of children or persons under age which are illegal or lawfully interpreted as constituting delinquency."

Causes
One theory is "children differ...in key temperamental and cognitive elements that make up antisocial propensity. According to these typologies difficult children negatively affect their parents’ disciplinary strategies, resulting in harsher and inconsistent punishments and parents being less involved in the socialization process. These negative child–parent transactions set a child off on a delinquent path that starts in the early teens, entails many delinquent acts and persists far into adulthood." This leads parenting style to deteriorate from 'authoritative' (high support and control) to 'neglectful' (low support            and control).

Various possible genetic determinants of temperament such as attention deficit hyperactivity disorder have been described.