Designing Prevention Measures for Deviant Behaviour in Youth and Social Contexts: Family, School, Peer Groups, Sporting Environments

This article explores the prevention of youth deviance, both individually and in groups, often arising from spontaneous aggregation processes. Early approaches focused mainly on social, environmental, and legal contexts, while later research added cognitive-behavioural perspectives, showing that deviance results from the interaction between dysfunctional cognitive, emotional, and socio-environmental factors. For healthy development, minors must be supported in the family, school, and community, where they acquire moral rules and awareness of both rights and duties. Although peer interactions help overcome individualism, they can also facilitate deviance. Thus, comprehensive prevention programmes are needed, and sport should be considered a valuable tool for shaping personality. Conversely, weak family and school relations hinder the internalisation of norms and increase risks of deviance. In modern societies, juvenile delinquency remains closely related to structural complexity.