The Relationship Between Learning Disability and Juvenile Delinquency

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Abstract
Is there a link between learning disabilities and juvenile delinquency? If so, what is the nature of that link? Can it be broken by a program of remediation? This article describes the background, research, and results of a multiyear project, the Learning Disability-Juvenile Delinquency Project, designed to address these questions. The results of cross-sectional and longitudinal studies of samples of adolescent males from public schools, juvenile courts, and correctional facilities confirm the school failure theory, the susceptibility theory, and the differential treatment theory—theories positing a causal relationship between learning disability and juvenile delinquency. Adolescents with learning disabilities had significantly higher rates of general delinquent behavior; they engaged in more violence, substance abuse, and school disruption than non-learning-disabled adolescents. The likelihood of arrest and adjudication was also substantially higher for adolescents handicapped by learning disabilities. An evaluation of an academic treatment program demonstrated that remedial instruction was effective in improving the academic skills and decreasing the delinquency of learning disabled youth who had been officially adjudicated.