Abstract
IN Revista de Ja Universidad del Cauca (No. 9, June 1946), Luis Carles Pérez deals with factors responsible for crime among young people in Colombia. The author provides statistics based upon the results of certain investigations, in particular of the cases where there has been death of one or both parents, and these present some interesting features. When the mother survives, the number of delinquents increases, but when the father survives it decreases; the greatest number comes from cases where both parents are alive. Offences against property are by far the most numerous, and next to these, but very much less numerically, are offences against persons and cases of vagrancy. Cases of lapses after reformatory treatment are numerous; they suggest that it has no effect or that the teaching is practically the negation of correctional. Other matters are discussed, such as the larger number of male than of female criminals, the criminality of women in Colombia (in 1944, out of a total of 5,217 people condemned for offences, only a little more than 6 per cent were women), the problem of crime among the Indians, the Indian in relation to the law in Colombia, etc. In connexion with the last point, there is no general legislation; the protectors and judges of the Indians are usually the missionaries. They are authorized to exercise civil, penal and judicial jurisdiction over them, in accordance with a law passed in 1890. Difficulties arise in those cases where it is not very easy to differentiate between Indians who are civilized and those who are not. The methods for obviating this difficulty are by no means ideal, and alterations in the system are matters of great importance.
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Delinquency among Young People in Colombia. Nature 158, 941 (1946). https://doi.org/10.1038/158941a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/158941a0