The precipitating causes are those which are closely related in time or
circumstance to the actual misbehaviour. The predisposing causes are
those which create an emotional maladjustment in a person and thus
induce a susceptibility to the precipitating cause. For instance, a
semi-nude figure or a song with a double meaning will not incite a
properly instructed adolescent to sexual misconduct. But if by parental
neglect or failure to control a young person is predisposed to
anti-social conduct, there is danger in any form of suggestiveness.

The Committee has carefully considered many suggested causes (whether
precipitating or predisposing) and now sets out its views on those which
merit special mention.

If, as the Committee believes, immoral behaviour should be regarded as a
phase or facet of juvenile delinquency, the same influences which tend
to incite other anti-social behaviour are in operation here.

Much has been written in textbooks, in journals, and in various
scattered articles about the causes of juvenile delinquency. What
applies in other communities, and in other aspects of juvenile
delinquency, must apply with much the same force in this Dominion as
elsewhere, and to the sexual deviant as to all other juvenile
delinquents. In searching for the real or substantive cause it must be
borne in mind that juvenile delinquency, of the type now being
considered, is a new feature of modern life and a facet of juvenile
delinquency which does not appear to have engaged the attention of
research workers.

The state of affairs which has come about was uncertain in origin,
insidious in growth, and has developed over a wide field. In searching