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Delinquency prevention for individual change: Richard Clarke Cabot and the making of the Cambridge-Somerville Youth Study
Abstract
Purpose: Richard Clarke Cabot (1868–1939) designed and directed one of criminology's most well-known delinquency prevention programs and the field's first randomized controlled experiment: the Cambridge-Somerville Youth Study (CSYS). This paper aims to develop an historical understanding of the making of the CSYS through a focus on Cabot. Methods: The present study is guided by the socio-historical approach and informed by past historical research in criminology. It draws upon a wide array of archival records and published works from the late 19th century to present day. Results: The CSYS came to fruition through a culmination of personal, professional, and institutional influences on Cabot, including: his ideals and sense of pragmatism, refined by his transition from medicine to social ethics and social work; criminological luminaries in the 1920s and 1930s, who focused on the individual over the environment—most notably, William Healy and Augusta Bronner and Sheldon and Eleanor Glueck; and Cabot's concern with the failures of treatment of offenders. Conclusions: The study's early history and its lineage to Joan McCord's research on the study allows us to discern some of its legacies for delinquency prevention today, including application of the experimental design and a holistic view of delinquency prevention. The CSYS continues to have an influence on criminological thinking and research.
... [5] Historical research has previously investigated the personal, professional, and institutional influences that inspired Cabot's vision for the study and its research design. [5], [6], [7], [8] Yet Cabot-both a physician and a social interventionist-lived at the interface of medicine and the social sciences. His study marks a telling moment in the history of attempts to compare like with like-of the evolving articulation among pre-allocation stratification, matching, alternate allocation, random allocation, and other innovations intended to ensure fair comparisons of the effects of interventions. ...
... [2] As Forsetland and colleagues observe, "McCall clearly regarded reliance on chance as inferior to active matching of groups using measures of general ability, and we have been unable to find any account of him having used chance (random allocation) to generate comparison groups in intervention studies." [4] compare like with like in the social sciences and medicine: Part 1: The context of the social sciences 6 This can be observed in early experiments in education that used matching rather than random allocation for generating equivalent comparison groups. For example, Winch [45] reported on a series of experiments on memory in 10-year-old children. ...
... Cabot 1940;Powers & Witmer, 1951). It is also the case that detailed accounts of the study have recently been published in this journal (Welsh et al., 2019a) and elsewhere (e.g., Tremblay et al., 2019;Welsh et al., 2017;Zane et al., 2016Zane et al., , 2017. ...
... So far, research on the history of the study has examined three key developments. The first has to do with Richard Cabot, his storied life and career that culminated in the development and implementation of the CSYS (which would turn out to be the last project of his life), and the influences (personal, professional, and institutional) that motivated him to design the intervention with the aim of preventing delinquency in the first instance and trying to bring about individual-level change (see Welsh et al., 2017). While it has been written that Cabot had a profound influence on the Gluecks' research on criminal careers, originating in a 1925 seminar on social ethics taught by Cabot and attended by Sheldon Glueck (Laub & Sampson, 1991: 1407; see also Allport, 1951: vi), the Gluecks themselves were a major influence on Cabot developing the CSYS, let alone his plans for a long-term follow-up and to investigate the natural history of offending. ...
Objectives
The article reflects on some pioneers in experimental criminology, including those who contributed to the development and longevity of the Cambridge-Somerville Youth Study (CSYS), and reports on a new program of research on the CSYS, extending the study to 85 years (1935–2020) and beyond.
Methods
The key focal points are the CSYS, a randomized controlled trial of a delinquency prevention intervention, and the people who were central to its development, implementation, and follow-ups. A wide range of published sources and archival records are used.
Results
The idea of “standing on the shoulders of giants” or standing on the shoulders of pioneers in one field or another is a hallmark of science and scientific progress. This is at the heart of a new program of research on the CSYS, with four areas under investigation: (1) intervention effects over the full life-course; (2) development of criminal offending over the full life-course; (3) intergenerational effects (over three generations); and (4) historical understanding. Each area is discussed with reference to the wider context, new findings, and work underway or planned for the years ahead.
Conclusions
Joan McCord is one of our giants in experimental criminology. She revived the CSYS, made it into the pioneering longitudinal-experimental study that we know today, and set the stage for a new program of research on the study.
... Cabot was also influenced by the high recidivism rates of juvenile reformatories of the day, and he set out to intervene in the lives of at-risk boys -"predelinquents" as he called them-before contact with the formal justice system (Cabot, 1930). Other influences, most notably, the work of William Healy and Augusta Bronner and Sheldon and Eleanor Glueck, also played an important role in shaping Cabot's vision of the study (Welsh et al., 2017;2019a; see also Laub and Sampson, 1991). ...
... (See e.g., Podolsky et al., 2021;Welsh et al., 2017;2019a;2020;2021; ...
... (4) On historical significance: What is our historical understanding of the development of the study, its influences on delinquency prevention and the discipline of criminology, and what are the lessons for today? (See e.g., Podolsky et al., 2021;Welsh et al., 2017Welsh et al., , 2019aWelsh et al., , 2020Welsh et al., , 2022 ...
Founded in 1935, the Cambridge-Somerville Youth Study (CSYS) is a randomized controlled experiment of a delinquency prevention intervention, with an embedded prospective longitudinal survey, involving 506 underprivileged boys, ages 5 to 13 years (median = 10.5 years), from Cambridge and Somerville, Massachusetts. The CSYS has two main objectives: to evaluate the effects of the delinquency prevention program and to investigate the development of delinquency and criminal offending over the life-course. It has been the subject of four follow-ups, with each carried out at key stages of the participants’ life-course and spanning more than 70 years: transition from adolescence to adulthood (in 1948); early adulthood (in 1956); middle age (1975–1979); and old age (2016 to present). As of the latest follow-up, 18 participants (3.6%) are missing. Data collection has been detailed and extensive, including records on the boys prior to intervention; case histories of the treatment group boys and their families during intervention; questionnaires and interviews of participants in middle age; records of delinquency, offending, and other life-course outcomes through middle age; and records of mortality through old age. The CSYS has advanced knowledge on risk factors for offending, with a particular focus on family, the complex interaction of these risk factors, the relationship between offending and mortality over the full-life course, the potential for social interventions to cause harm, and the role of deviancy training in group-directed programs. In addition, it has reinforced the need—for science and policy—for long-term follow-ups of developmental crime prevention programs.
... Um dos mais relevantes exemplos de programas que reportaram efeitos negativos é o clássico estudo Cambridge-Somerville Youth Study. Iniciado em 1939, este estudo tinha como principal objetivo a prevenção do desenvolvimento do comportamento delinquente (Welsh, Zane & Rocque, 2017). Um total de 650 crianças do sexo masculino (mais tarde reduzidas a 506), socialmente desfavorecidas, e com idades compreendidas entre os 5 e os 13 anos de idade, participaram neste estudo. ...
... Cabot was also influenced by the high recidivism rates of juvenile reformatories of the day, and he set out to intervene in the lives of at-risk boys-"predelinquents" as he called them-before contact with the formal justice system [3]. Other influences, most notably, the work of William Healy and Augusta Bronner and Sheldon and Eleanor Glueck, also played an important role in shaping Cabot's vision of the study ( [71,72]; see also [29]). ...
PurposeTo begin to develop an understanding of knowledge translation of early developmental crime prevention.Methods
Involves a narrative review of experiments of early developmental prevention with measures of delinquency and criminal offending, and profiles two leading experiments, the Cambridge-Somerville Youth Study (CSYS) and the Montréal Longitudinal-Experimental Study.ResultsWhile the roots of early developmental crime prevention can be traced to studies of human development, experiments of preventive interventions are at the heart of knowledge translation and policy influence. This can be seen in the form of replications, the process of scaling up effective interventions for wider dissemination, and inspiration for prevention scientists to launch new and innovative experiments—sometimes with the aim to improve upon past results. For example, far from curtailing policy interest in a developmental approach to delinquency prevention or dampening the need for prevention experiments, the harmful effects reported in the 30-year follow-up of the CSYS instead had an influence on some new longitudinal-experimental studies in developmental and life-course criminology.Conclusions
New experiments are needed to continue to advance early developmental crime prevention, and further research is needed to add to our understanding of knowledge translation in this area.
This book describes the lives of 12 people born in Europe and North America during the Second World War. They became leading scholars on the development and prevention of violent human behavior. From the first to the last page, the book introduces contrasting life-stories and shows how their paths crossed to create a relatively unified body of knowledge on how human violence develops and possible prevention methods. The authors describe the similarities and differences in their family background, university training, theories, and collaborations. Not to mention how they differ in research methods, scientific conclusions, and their influence on the research published today. These comparisons celebrates the diversity of their experience and, in turn, their achievements. By knowing this, you can stand on the shoulders of these giants to look to the future of this subject and potentially contribute to its next steps.
Purpose
Recent increases in rates of female offending and associated longitudinal data collection efforts focusing on females have contributed to important advances in our understanding of the theoretical mechanisms that shape female offending from onset through desistance. Even so, this literature lacks a historical context against which we can assess the scope and breadth of recent empirical findings and their related theoretical implications. Focusing on desistance, we address this gap with analyses of life history data from a sample of female offenders collected by Sheldon and Eleanor Glueck in the early twentieth century. Using these data, the current study provides a historical backdrop against which we compare contemporary theoretical and empirical findings on desistance, specifically the broad influence and specific character of external change mechanisms for women’s desistance.
Methods
Using complete retrospective life history and prospective follow-up data for 424 female offenders (264 of whom are desisters), we use logistic regression and conjunctive analysis to assess the influence of key external change mechanisms on the likelihood of desistance.
Results
Findings indicate that, as with contemporary samples, external change mechanisms (marriage, motherhood, and work) are implicated in desistance. However, the specific pattern of effects suggests important and historically contingent differences in how these mechanisms operate over time.
Conclusions
We conclude that external change mechanisms not only activate informal social controls and commitments to a non-criminal identity, they implicate compliance with gendered social norms. As these norms change, the salience and character of key external change mechanisms for women’s desistance should also change. Of course, this is also the case for males, and we encourage desistance researchers to consider the importance of gender as a social institution and the ways in which it conditions the external change mechanisms available to offenders.
Objectives
In a series of important scholarly works, Joan McCord made the case for the criminological community to take seriously harmful effects arising from individual-based crime prevention programs. Building on these works, two key questions are of central interest to this paper: What has been the state of research on harmful effects of these crime prevention programs since McCord’s works? And what are the theoretical, methodological, and programmatic characteristics of individual-based crime prevention programs with reported harmful effects?
Methods
This paper reports on the first empirical review of harmful effects of crime prevention programs, drawing upon 15 Campbell Collaboration systematic reviews. Altogether, 574 experimental and quasi-experimental studies (published and unpublished) with 645 independent effect sizes were reviewed.
Results
A total of 22 harmful effects from 22 unique studies of individual-based crime prevention programs were identified. Almost all of the studies have been reported since 1990, all but 2 were carried out in the United States, and two-thirds can be considered unpublished. The studies covered a wide range of interventions, from anti-bullying programs at schools, to second responder interventions involving police, to the Scared Straight program for juvenile delinquents, with more than half taking place in criminal justice settings. Boot camps and drug courts accounted for the largest share of studies with harmful effects.
Conclusions
Theory failure, implementation failure, and deviancy training were identified as the leading explanations for harmful effects of crime prevention programs, and they served as key anchors for a more focused look at implications for theory and policy. Also, the need for programs to be rigorously evaluated and monitored is evident, which will advance McCord’s call for attention to safety and efficacy.
Objectives
This study was designed to provide experimental evidence of the effects of a preschool program on young children living in poverty. It began as a program evaluation but now, half a century later, serves as a test of the long-term effects and return on investment of high-quality preschool education for young children living in poverty.
Methods
This study was conducted in the U.S., beginning in the 1960s, and has generated data on study participants from birth through 40, with new data now being collected at age 50. The study used random assignment procedures to assign 123 children to a preschool program and a control group who receive no preschool program.
Results
Program participants surpassed non-participants in intellectual performance at school entry, school achievement throughout schooling, commitment to schooling, high school graduation rate, adult employment rate and earnings, reduced childhood antisocial behavior, and reduced adult crime and incarceration. The program's return on investment was at least seven times as great as its operating cost.
Conclusions
While these powerful results have been found not only in this study but in several similar studies, they have not been found in studies of larger preschool programs, such as the Head Start Impact Study. This discrepancy suggests that differences between the two types of programs account for the better results found in studies such as this one. Among these differences are highly qualified teachers, a valid child development curriculum, extensive engagement of parents, and regular assessment of program implementation and children's development
Objectives
To conduct a meta-analytic review of selective and indicated mentoring interventions for effects for youth at risk on delinquency and key associated outcomes (aggression, drug use, academic functioning). We also undertook the first systematic evaluation of intervention implementation features and organization and tested for effects of theorized key processes of mentor program effects.
Methods
Campbell Collaboration review inclusion criteria and procedures were used to search and evaluate the literature. Criteria included a sample defined as at risk for delinquency due to individual behavior such as aggression or conduct problems or environmental characteristics such as residence in a high-crime community. Studies were required to be random assignment or strong quasi-experimental design. Of 163 identified studies published from 1970–2011, 46 met criteria for inclusion.
Results
Mean effects sizes were significant and positive for each outcome category (ranging from d = 0.11 for academic achievement to d = 0.29 for aggression). Heterogeneity in effect sizes was noted for all four outcomes. Stronger effects resulted when mentor motivation was professional development but not by other implementation features. Significant improvements in effects were found when advocacy and emotional support mentoring processes were emphasized.
Conclusions
This popular approach has significant impact on delinquency and associated outcomes for youth at risk for delinquency. While evidencing some features may relate to effects, the body of literature is remarkably lacking in details about specific program features and procedures. This persistent state of limited reporting seriously impedes understanding about how mentoring is beneficial and ability to maximize its utility.
This book explores the fundamental and enduring question of how the law should treat the young. Sifting through almost 3,000 Chicago case files from the early 20th century, this book reveals how children's advocates slowly built up a separate system for juveniles, all the while fighting political and legal battles to legitimate this controversial institution. Harkening back to a more hopeful and nuanced age, this book provides a historical framework for thinking about youth policy.
This chapter describes the development and evaluation of the Communities That Care (CTC) system, a comprehensive, community-based strategy for preventing substance use, delinquency, and violence among youth. We explain how communities trained in this system access information regarding the predictors of youth crime and target these predictors using science-based and developmentally appropriate proven interventions that can be implemented from the prenatal period through young adulthood to reduce offending over the life-course. Use of this system by community coalitions has been shown to reduce the initiation and prevalence of substance use, delinquency, and violence in well-controlled scientific trials.
These results demonstrate that CTC’s theory-guided strategy for building community capacity to use tested and effective preventive interventions that reduce prevalent risks and strengthen protective factors can minimize involvement in offending, as hypothesized by life-course theories. Additional research is needed to better understand which risk and protective factors are most salient and malleable during different developmental stages, the relative benefits versus costs of preventive intervention at different developmental stages, and how strategies like CTC that seek to increase the use of tested and effective preventive interventions in communities can be sustained.
Joan McCord (1930-2004) was one of the most famous, most-respected, and best-loved criminologists of her generation. A brilliant pioneer, Dr. McCord was best known for her work on the Cambridge-Somerville Youth Study, the first large-scale, longitudinal experimental study in the field of criminology. The study was among the first to demonstrate unintended harmful effects of a well-meaning prevention program. Dr. McCord's most important essays from this groundbreaking research project are among those included in this volume.McCord also co-wrote, edited, or co-edited twelve volumes and authored or co-authored 127 journal articles and book chapters. She wrote across a broad array of subjects, including delinquency, alcoholism, violence, crime prevention, and criminal theory. This book brings her most important and lasting work together in one place for the first time.
In 1905, Massachusetts General Hospital initiated the first medical social work program in the United States. Based on the writings of its leaders, this paper presents the early history of medical social work in the United States. Inspired by developments in European health care that emphasized the community context of disease, medical social work pioneers saw a need to individualize the patient while also promoting public health measures in the community, improving the patient's environment to eliminate the causes of disease. in addition, since they served patients because of their diseases rather than their poverty, medical social workers were among the first to provide social work services to the non-poor. in spite of their emphasis on environmental change, many of early medical social work leaders had an anti-institutional bias; they were suspicious of large-scale solutions for what they saw as fundamentally individual problems. Consequently, methods for promoting individual adaptation developed more rapidly than methods for promoting environmental change. Ironically, the medicalization of social problems in contemporary times has resulted in a focus on individual pathology rather than social and lifestyle causation in health, even as the rising cost and complexity of the system challenges health care consumers in the United States. Reaffirming the environmental emphasis of medical social work pioneers provides a way for today' s health care social workers to incorporate environmental modification into their practice and promote the health of all citizens.
There are a lot of criminological theories that state that criminal behavior is more or less likely dependent upon peers and the value placed on shared relationships. This article studies the nature and impact of programs designed to resist forming attachments to undesirable peers and programs designed to create attachments to desirable prosocial models. It summarizes the theoretical beliefs that provide a foundation for the anticipated impact of peer risk and mentoring programs. Next, it provides an overview of peer risk interventions and considers some of the characteristics of these programs. It also discusses the evaluation methods and the limits of programs aimed at peer risk.
Contributions of William Healy to the growth of professional mental health activities, and in particular to psychology, are discussed.
Crime prevention has long figured prominently in the scholarly and applied traditions of criminology. Using a socio-historical approach, this article examines the developments of and influences on the concept of crime prevention in the USA over the last century. We argue that crime prevention is a unique social and environmental strategy for reducing crime and is distinct from crime control or punishment. Prevention's main characteristics include a focus on intervening in the first instance - before a crime has been committed - and operating outside of the formal justice system. The historical record of the scholarship and practice of crime prevention in the USA embraces this view. A more current perspective sees crime prevention as the full range of techniques, from prenatal home visits to prison sentences, defined more by its outcome - the prevention of a future criminal event - than its character or approach. A return to the original meaning of prevention is considered. © The Author(s) 2013 Reprints and permissions: sagepub.co.uk/journalsPermissions.nav.
Prevention experiments with children have targeted the development of antisocial behavior and confirm the hypothesis that early childhood factors are important precursors of delinquent behavior and that a cumulative effect model best fits the data. Experiments have aimed to prevent criminal behavior or one of three important delinquency risk factors: socially disruptive behavior, cognitive deficits, and poor parenting. Experiments with juvenile delinquency as an outcome demonstrate that positive results are more likely when interventions are aimed at more than one risk factor, last for a relatively long period of time, and are implemented before adolescence. Experiments featuring early childhood interventions with socially disruptive behavior, cognitive deficits, or parenting as an outcome generally have positive effects. The majority of studies, small-scale confirmation or replication experiments, need to be followed by large-scale field experiments that test the efficacy and cost of implementation in re...
Longitudinal and experimental studies in criminology have advanced substantially since publication of my Crime and Justice reviews of longitudinal studies (in 1979) and randomized experiments (in 1983). Longitudinal surveys have become larger and longer-lasting; have focused more on self-reported offending; have made increasing efforts to study biological, neighborhood, and protective factors; and have increasingly investigated intergenerational transmission and desistance. Randomized experiments have become much more common in the United States but not elsewhere, and there have been more large-scale, replicated, and multisite experiments. Experiments have demonstrated that many types of interventions are effective, including nurse home visiting, cognitive-behavioral skills training, parent management training, preschool intellectual enrichment programs, multisystemic therapy, mentoring, hot spots policing, and drug courts. Experiments are needed on the effectiveness of major sentences such as prison and probation and on intervening processes between interventions and outcomes. A multiple cohort longitudinal-experimental study should be mounted to simultaneously advance knowledge about the development, explanation, prevention, and treatment of offending.
Research Summary
In this paper, we argue that both science and the policy process are well served by research with high evidentiary value. We also argue that experimental research is valuable in the policy domain not only because of its high evidentiary content but also because of its transparency. To exemplify this point, we describe how a decade‐long research program on hot spots policing overturned the conventional wisdom that police could not affect crime and, in so doing, has profoundly altered police practice. Still, we recognize that for a variety of practical and ethical reasons, policy‐relevant research on policing and criminal justice policy more generally cannot be based entirely on experiments. We discuss two key features of randomization—balance in expectation between the treated and the control group on all potential confounders and exogeneity of treatment status—that are the source of the high evidentiary status of randomized experiments. We go on to describe how these same two features can be credibly replicated in quasi‐experimental studies that are not subject to the ethical and practical obstacles that may make experiments impractical in some circumstances.
Policy Implications
We urge criminologists to take greater advantage of quasi‐experimental research opportunities. We also recommend that criminologists go beyond simply identifying such opportunities. They should engage practitioners and policy makers and make clear what is required to allow for strong evidence of program effectiveness.
Research Summary
Several criminological theories prioritize the role of the family in influencing juvenile delinquency, and both observational studies (Derzon, ; Hoeve et al., ; Steinberg, ) and experimental evaluations of family‐focused interventions (Farrington and Welsh, ; Sandler, Schoenfelder, Wolchik, and MacKinnon, ) have demonstrated that parenting practices affect the degree to which children and adolescents will engage in substance use, delinquency, and/or violence. Moreover, research regarding the ability of family‐focused interventions to reduce offending when implemented in “real‐world” conditions is mounting.
Policy Implications
Scientific experiments are increasingly being used to identify why, for whom, and under what conditions treatments are most effective, information that Sampson, Winship, and Knight ( ) in the main article of this special issue emphasize is needed to provide assurances that programs will work when replicated in communities. Based on this evidence, should criminologists advocate for policies and practices intended to increase the dissemination of effective family‐based programs? This essay contends that there is sufficient evidence to do so. To ensure that such policies produce desired reductions in juvenile delinquency, however, criminologists also must reach consensus on the evidentiary standards needed to identify “what works,” advocate for increased attention to implementation fidelity during program replication, and increase support for preventive interventions among policy makers and the public.
This study uses case records from the Los Angeles Juvenile Court to examine how racial discrimination played out in juvenile justice before the decline of public confidence in rehabilitation in the 1960s and 1970s. Using qualitative and quantitative methodologies, I compare how Mexican‐American and white boys (ages 10–17) were treated by the juvenile court during the Great Depression era. I find that although Mexican‐American boys were more likely to be arrested and petitioned to court, they were less likely to receive out‐of‐family placements because court officials viewed these placements as beneficial and were less interested in rehabilitating minority than white youth. I compare these results with the current overrepresentation of minorities in institutional confinement and with contemporary studies that find that black youth are punished more severely than comparable whites. My research suggests that there have been major philosophical changes in how officials in the juvenile justice system view out‐of‐family placements, and that patterns of discrimination in juvenile justice depend upon how officials in courts and correctional institutions view the rehabilitative potential of their interventions.
By describing evaluations demonstrating that carefully planned and executed interventions can have harmful effects, the author argues that programs to prevent crime should be tested for safety as well as efficacy. Although client reports of benefits and improvements over predicted outcomes would have suggested benefits from intervention, randomly assigned matched cases used in one such comparison showed that an intervention lasting more than five years increased the likelihood of serious crime, alcoholism, early death, and mental illness.
This review highlights the importance of recognizing the possibility for doing harm when intentions are good. It describes several examples showing that well-planned and adequately executed programs provide no guarantee for safety or efficacy. The author concludes with recommendations for scientifically credible evaluations to promote progress in the field of crime prevention.
The Cambridge-Somerville Youth Study was founded in 1935 with the double purpose of preventing delin quency and providing research in the area of delinquency pre vention. 325 boys were selected to receive preventive treat ment, and a carefully matched group of 325 boys were provided as a control group. The treatment program utilized many of the practices prevalent in welfare work: family guidance, medical and academic assistance, co-ordination of community agencies, and supplementary entertainment for the boys. This article traces into adulthood the lives of 253 of the "treat ment" boys and their 253 matched mates in the control group. Although the boys were counseled for an average of five years, whatever benefits they may have received were not reflected in their criminal rates: As many treated boys as control boys had been convicted of crimes; they had com mitted approximately equal numbers of crimes and did not differ significantly in the ages when such crimes were com mitted. Nevertheless, evidence gleaned from this program suggests that early treatment and intensive contact with the boy may be an effective means toward crime prevention.
The general theories of criminality, both the different unitary explanation of Lombroso, Tarde, and Bonger, and the pluralistic interpretation of Ferri proved to be of little or no value in the control of behavior. The Study of the Delinquent as an Individual: Healy substituted for the methods of general observation, speculation, and statistics the all-round study of the individual delinquent. Trained in psychiatry and psychology, he emphasized physical examination and mental tests without ignoring social factors. However, he relied upon the experience of the social worker instead of calling into service the technique of the sociologist. The person as the Individual with Status: The study of individual behavior falls in the fields of psychiatry and psychology. The study of the person, as the product of social interaction, lies, primarily, in sociology. In the explanation and control of delinquency, it is significant to determine the nature of the participation of the person in the social organization, as in the insecurity or degradation of status, the type of personal behavior pettern, the degree of mobility, the change of the social environment and the collapse of the social world of the person. In the study of delinquency, the psychiatric, psychological, and sociological methods of investigation are not in conflict with each other, but rather complementary and interdependent.
After a useful beginning in the eighteenth-century Enlightenment as both an experimental and analytic social science, criminology sank into two centuries of torpor. Its resurrection in the late twentieth century crime wave successfully returned criminology to the forefront of discovering useful, if not always used, facts about prevailing crime patterns and responses to crime. Criminology’s failures of “use” in creating justice more enlightened by knowledge of its effects is linked to the still limited usefulness of criminology, which lacks a comprehensive body of evidence to guide sanctioning decisions. Yet that knowledge is rapidly growing, with experimental (as distinct from analytic) criminology now more prominent than at any time since Henry Fielding founded criminology while inventing the police. The future of criminology may thus soon resemble medicine more than economics.
This book presents the results of 20 years of ecological research into the nature of the relationship between the distribution of delinquency and the pattern of physical structure and social organization of 21 American cities. Uniform findings in every city confirm the hypothesis that the physical deterioration of residential areas accompanied by social disorganization is greatest in a central zone in the business district, intermediate in a middle zone, and lowest in the other zones, and that there is a progressive decline in the incidence of delinquency from the innermost zone where it is most concentrated to the peripheral areas. Delinquency is found to be highly correlated with changes in population, inadequate housing, poverty, presence of Negroes and foreign-born, tuberculosis, mental disorders, and adult criminality. The common basic factor is social disorganization or the absence of community effort to cope with these conditions. Causation of juvenile delinquency is to be sought more in terms of the community than of the individual. 107 maps pertaining to the cities studied and 118 tables relating to population and delinquency rates are included as well as a chapter describing the Chicago Area Project as a demonstration of the effective mobilization of community forces to combat delinquency and crime. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
[Richard C.] Cabot hypothesized that even rebellious youths from ghastly families "may conceivably be steered away from a delinquent career and toward useful citizenship if a devoted individual outside his own family gives him consistent emotional support, friendship, and timely guidance" / the Cambridge-Somerville Youth Study would test this hypothesis / the Youth Study was designed both to learn about the development of delinquent youngsters and to test Cabot's belief about how a child could be steered away from delinquency / average age at the start of treatment was 10.5 / when the program terminated . . . boys in the treatment group had been visited, on the average, two times a month for 5 1/2 years / the most recent follow-up began when the men were an average of 47 years old
used information collected from schools, neighborhoods, courts, physicians, and families to match pairs of boys [who were similar] / the treatment group was assigned to a social worker who tried to build a close personal relationship with the boy and assist the boy and his family in a variety of ways (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Report of a large-scale longitudinal study, covering a ten-year period, which contributes to the understanding of some of the early family influences associated with later criminality and of the significant factors in treatment. Harvard Book List (edited) 1964 #576 (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
One Thousand Juvenile Delinquents, published by the same authors in 1934, summarized the careers of 1000 male delinquents during a 5-year period following treatment by the Boston Juvenile Court. The present volume continues the study of these same offenders for an additional 10-year period. An important finding is that both recidivism and the number of serious crimes committed show a significant decrease in successive follow-up periods. The subsequent conduct of the delinquents is analyzed with respect to a number of determining factors and the relationships discovered are used to form a table for predicting the behavior of delinquents following treatment. The various peno-correctional methods to which the delinquents were subjected are considered in detail. Typical kinds of behavior occurring after each method of treatment are discussed and offenders who succeeded or failed under each regime are compared. 8 prediction tables were constructed from which the probability of success with different methods may be estimated from a knowledge of certain data regarding the individual, his family, and social background. The data are presented in extended tabular form in an appendix. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Reviews the book, "An experiment in the prevention of delinquency: The Cambridge-Somerville Youth Study," by Edwin Powers and Helen Witmer (see record
1952-00430-000). The book is devoted to the description and evaluation of a program, or as the authors call it, an experiment in the prevention of juvenile delinquency. This is an important book. Much too little has been done to put to a rigorous test the explicit or implicit assumptions that underlie much of what is done in social engineering. The experiment reported does this in a fashion that renders it an outstanding example of the best in social science research. The idea failed to produce hoped for results but the experiment designed to test the idea is a significant contribution to all of the social sciences. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
This study analyzes the work of William H. Sheldon, the psychologist, physician, and advocate of the study of body types. It investigates how he arrived at his much-repeated finding that a correlation exists between mesomorphy (a stocky, muscular body build) and delinquency and how his ideas were validated and perpetuated. It reviews what Sheldon actually said about the causes of crime; identifies his goals in searching for a relationship between body shape and criminality; explains how he found audiences for his biological theory at a time when sociological approaches dominated criminology; and attempts to understand the current criminological ambivalence about the scientific status of Sheldon's work, despite its discreditation decades ago. I argue that the tripartite structure of Sheldon's thought attracted three different audiences–methodologists, social scientists, and supporters–and that it encouraged the supporters to fund his research without reference to the critiques of the social scientists. I also argue that somatotyping was part of a broader antimodernist reaction within international scientific communities against the dislocations of twentieth-century life. To understand the origins, acceptance, and maintenance of criminological ideas, we need a historical perspective on figures of the past. Positivism may inform us about what is true and false, but we also need to know how truth and falsity have been constructed over time and how the ideas of earlier criminologists were shaped by their personal and social contexts.
In response to a devastating critique of the state of criminology known as the Michael-Adler Report, Edwin H. Sutherland created differential association theory as a paradigm for the field of criminology. I contend that Sutherland's strategy was flawed because he embraced a sociological model of crime and in doing so adopted a form of sociological positivism. Furthermore, Sutherland ignored key facts about crime that were contrary to his theoretical predilections. Recognizing that facts must come first and that criminology is an interdisciplinary field of study, I offer life-course criminology as a paradigm for understanding the causes and dynamics of crime. In addition, I identify three warning signs that I believe inhibit the advancement of criminology as a science and a serious intellectual enterprise.
Two recent American Society of Criminology presidential addresses have identified as a key problem the fact that criminology lacks a history. In this address, I ask why criminology (in contrast to closely related fields) has generated so few studies of its past; I also identify some results of this failure and discuss why intellectual fields need a sense of their origins and development. History molds individual and collective identities; it lays a foundation for sociologies of knowledge; it encourages reflexivity, teaches us where our ideas came from, and gives us a sense of where we are going. To encourage historical work, I propose an overall framework for understanding the evolution of criminology, reaching back to the late eighteenth century and continuing into the present. My overall framework is that of scientific modernism, within which I identify the following three primary phases: exploratory modernism, confident modernism, and agonistic modernism. In conclusion, I suggest ways to stimulate histories of science in the field of criminology.
The field of criminology lacks a sense of its own history. To rectify this situation, I apply the concepts and framework of the life-course perspective to the development of criminology as a discipline. Examining criminology in the United States over the last 100 years, I discuss three eras (or life-course phases), intellectual continuities and turning points in the field. My thesis is that if we knew our history, we would realize that ideas about crime matter. I offer a revised version on how to view criminology and in doing so address the theme of the 2003 annual meeting of the American Society of Criminology, “The Challenge of Practice, the Benefits of Theory.”
Biological explanations shaped criminology at its inception, and today they are reemerging with fresh vigor and increased potential. But many criminologists do not understand how biological theories developed, what they contributed to criminology generally and where they went astray. This paper focuses on the work of Earnest A. Hooton, whose criminological studies, published in 1939, met with decidedly mixed reviews but were nonetheless discussed for decades in criminological textbooks. Information about a now half-forgotten and misunderstood figure like Hooton, in addition to being useful in and of itself, contributes to the history of criminology as a discipline—a project essential to the field's ultimate maturity. It helps build a history of criminological knowledge.
Youth violence is a major public concern in all modern societies. To prevent this violence, we need to understand how innocent
young children grow into violent adolescents. Longitudinal studies of large samples of children from infancy to adulthood
indicate that the peak age for physical aggression is between the end of the second and the end of the fourth year after birth.
Fortunately, because of their size, physical aggression from two-year-olds does not constitute a major threat to the public
in general. It is also providential that most children learn to control these physically dangerous and socially disruptive
behaviours before they reach their maximum size. This natural course of development suggests that the preschool years are
the best window of opportunity to prevent the development of cases of chronic physical aggression. Safe streets probably start
with quality early education.