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These reflections on work with juvenile delinquents are the fruit of the experience of a man who was both a judge specialising in juvenile affairs for over 30 years, and now a psychoanalyst who worked with teams of youth support workers taking care of minors entrusted to child welfare services or the Judicial Juvenile Protection service (PJJ). They maintain that juvenile delinquents, as a result of the symbolic breakdowns suffered by their parents or even earlier generations, are subject to an unconscious death wish imposed by their genitors. In this way, unconsciously and without any desire for enlightenment, young delinquents, through their symptomatic delinquent acts, target the justice system like dead sons in order to take revenge for their parents’ death wish, and to seek justice for the original injustice inflicted upon them. And if society and its social superego also turn a blind eye to this unconscious process, the result will be catastrophic, for the commission of offences is an unconscious cry for justice, and the judgment and punishment of those offences does nothing more than add to their perpetrators’ unconscious feelings of injustice. And yet, delinquency is not a foregone conclusion, since we are also responsible for our position. This means that juvenile delinquents have the opportunity to reorient or reformulate their relationships with others. However, this requires professionals to refrain from confusing the symptom with the reason for the symptom and to embrace a different perception of juvenile delinquents, in all their singularity - a perception embodying life rather than death.