Psychological acculturation and juvenile delinquency: comparing Moroccan immigrant families from a general and pretrial detention population.

Although several theoretical notions have been proposed predicting a relationship between acculturation orientation and juvenile delinquency, the available empirical research is scarce and limited. To extend former research, in this study, we used latent class analyses to compare bidimensional psychological acculturation orientation of Moroccan immigrant boys in pretrial detention with those of Moroccan boys in the general population. We also examined their parents' acculturation orientation. We found that boys in pretrial detention were clearly overrepresented in the integrated psychological acculturation class and underrepresented in the separated psychological acculturation class when we compared them with the boys in the general population. Highly similar results were found for their parents. In contrast, boys in pretrial detention were as likely to be faced with an intergenerational acculturation gap as boys from the general population.