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Abstract Students strongly bonded to the educational institution are more motivated to study and less likely to present behavioral problems and/or juvenile delinquency. This study's objective was to verify the existence of variations in school bonding among different groups of adolescents and identify the most problematic aspects among adolescents in conflict with the law from the perspective of Marc LeBlanc's Social and Personal Control Theory of Deviant Behavior. The 60 adolescents participating in the study responded to the Portuguese version of the School Scale, part of the Measuring Adolescent Social and Personal Adaptation Scale. The results reveal that the level of school bonding differentiated the groups, showing that offenders who dropped out of school obtained the worst indicators of school bonding when considering investment and commitment levels, as well as attachment to teachers.