The tendency to defy the world around them, to defy adults, a characteristic trait of adolescents who are members of groups that spend leisure time together, is manifested in a number of demonstrative characteristics of their behavior: symbols of independence such as a certain kind of clothing, jargon, and borrowing vocabulary from the criminal world. Under unfavorable social conditions, these groups may over time turn into social and antisocial groups. The author identifies three stages of devolvement. At the first stage of a group's negative development, the youngsters' ties to the group are random and amorphous, and there is no acknowledged leader. Such a group is made up of difficult adolescents who typically have a negative attitude toward school, are undisciplined, and engage in occasional deviant behavior such as smoking, gambling, drinking alcohol and using narcotics, committing petty thefts, and loitering. In the second stage, if the group stays together, it becomes stabilized, has fewer members, and someone becomes the leader. A negative attitude toward studies can turn into a hostile attitude toward teachers and toward better students, as well as toward school in general. By this time the members of such groups regularly commit not only immoral acts but also serious offenses such as thefts and acts of hooliganism. In the third stage of its deterioration, the group begins to live according to its own narrow group rules, which condone antisocial behavior. In most cases, the leader has done time in a penitentiary institution. A final break with school and studies takes place. Deviant behavior turns into criminal behavior such as stealing, robbery, malicious hooliganism, car thefts; ultimately, the group becomes criminal. The author maintains that the social significance of shortcomings in the performance of institutions of education lies in the fact that while they are specially intended to fulfill the functions of providing the teaching and upbringing of juveniles, they are not accomplishing them in full, or else they are not bringing the kind of influence to bear that is necessary to compensate for shortcomings in upbringing in the home and to oppose the negative influences of informal group association.