Social and familial maladjustment is the inability to conform to a group's habits and norms and to participate in its activities and productions. The purpose of this study is to study the social representations of the social and familial maladjustment of adolescents and young people. This is a case study, using a mixed method essentially qualitative, set in a closed educational center in the Department of Littoral in Benin. The study concerned adolescents and young people admitted to the center and their referents. The respondents in the target population were all male and aged 10 to 23 with an average age of 18 years. The social representations of maladjustment, according to young people and their referents are similar. They concern social disqualification, inadequate educational attitudes, the absence of familial model, educational failure linked to adolescents or young people and mystical-religious representations. Adolescents and young people define themselves as deviants while their referents define them as delinquents. This create an insecurity feeling and a need to protect society. Adults have to integrate themselves earlier in the prevention of this phenomenon with the help and /or child psychiatrist lead.

The developmental path of the minor may be marked by particular situations such as conflicts with the law, various crimes. The situations, contexts and processes that lead to crime are multiple. Thus, the aim of our research was to study the characteristics of minors judged for crime, seen in a judicial space. This was a retrospective, cross-sectional, descriptive study carried out at the Cotonou First Instance Court. Data were collected from the judicial files of minors tried for crime by the juvenile court ruling on criminal matters from 1 January 2011 to 31 December 2015; 34 files were taken into account. The respondents were all adolescents aged between 10 and 18 years. The majority of them were tried for homicide (61.7%) and rape (32.4%). For 35.3% of the minors tried for crime, the relationship with opposite sex parent had poor quality. These minors received a firm prison sentence (88.2%), and 11.8% of them were placed in a foster centre without receiving a prison sentence. Crimes committed by minors calls into question our ability to supervise and provide a safe and appropriate framework for the psychological construction of children and adolescents in our society. Measures should be taken in terms of prevention at various levels to reduce the risk of children developing criminal behaviour.

No abstract

No abstract