The juvenile delinquent functions as an emblem, not a person

Evidence

There is something deeply problematic about this. The “juvenile delinquent” is not a young person, but an emblem of impending social cataclysm. They are much talked about, but they do not speak. We do not see their faces. They are present only in the shadow-like challenge they cast on public morality. — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 2977

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the moral panic literature (Cohen’s Folk Devils) and to the reader’s note on moral panics requiring a moral dimension in the rejected-links examples.