The Prevention and Control of Delinquency

Robert MacIver, Jennifer Schrock

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• eBook ISBN: 9781351476430
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Criminology
• Index: Social Sciences

In this important classic work, one of America's foremost social scientists introduces a significant approach to the causation of delinquency and advances an all-inclusive strategy for coping with a national problem of continuing concern. MacIver shows that delinquency is caused by a complex and bewildering interplay of many factors and is not susceptible to simplistic explanations and solutions. He advances reasoned critiques of various theories regarding the causation of delinquency, while suggesting that the two combined factors most closely associated with delinquency--despite its increase among middle class youth--are urbanized poverty and ethnic or racial discrimination. Citing the encouraging results obtained by the establishment of ""predelinquent gangs"" by various organizations, he demonstrates that prevention of delinquency is far more successful than rehabilitation.MacIver emphasizes the need for a strategy consisting of closer coordination of programs, in nation as well as city, a sustained system of group after-care, and special training for law enforcement officers and judges to enable them to deal more competently with delinquents. In particular, he calls for better educational services, increased employment opportunities, and higher qualifications and salaries for counselors.The Prevention and Control of Delinquency, exploring an important aspect of urbanized life in instructive and absorbing detail, points the way for effective action in the various areas of delinquent behavior. It provides a concrete description of the more important devices and experiments that are now being developed and practiced. Written by an outstanding authority, this major work on the theoretical understanding, control, and cure of one of the crucial problems of our urban civilization is addressed to social scientists, organizational leaders and workers, and educators and planners in the field.

Part One
THE ASSOCIATED CONDITIONS

1
The Statistical Picture

In this study we offer a perspective on juvenile delinquency as it has developed in this country and seek to show how our present knowledge bears on the question of its prevention and control. There is an extensive literature on the subject, the most significant contributions being scattered through various learned and professional journals and government reports. Many variant or conflicting explanations are put forward to account for the continuing increase in the amount of delinquency as measured by statistical indices, and more than a few divergent proposals are made as an answer to the problem. Many agencies, both public and private, are directing their energies and contributing considerable sums of money to remedial methods. Nevertheless, there are no significant indications of any general improvement. In this writer’s experience, much of the official treatment of delinquents is still little affected by the findings of the research that has been devoted to the subject.

The statistical record is certainly alarming. Practically every year it shows a further increase in the proportion of delinquency. In the United States between 1948 and 1957 juvenile court cases more than doubled, whereas the youth population ten through seventeen years increased during the period by only 27 per cent. Between 1940 and 1961 court cases increased 400 per cent. The phenomenon is by no means peculiar to the United States. In Britain in 1962 delinquency was statistically twice as bigh for boys and three times as high for girls as it was before the First World War.¹ Western Germany reports an increase of 39.2 per cent in “convicted juveniles” fourteen to eighteen years old between 1951 and 1957, Eastern Germany an increase of juvenile offenses of 96.3 per cent for the same period.² Austria reports an increase of 68 per cent in “convicted juveniles” fourteen to eighteen years old between 1951 and 1956. Finland shows an increase of 61.7 per cent in its juvenile offenders fifteen to seventeen years old. Sweden reports between 1950 and 1956 an increase of 210 per cent of juveniles under fifteen years “suspected of criminal behavior.” Switzerland shows an increase in the various cantons.

Public concern has been aroused particularly by the headlines reporting gang “rumbles,” stabbings, shootings, and vandalism. It is impossible to derive any precise measurement of the volume of delinquency or of the actual increase that may have occurred. The various indices we employ—police arrests, court appearances, juvenile delinquency adjudications, institutional cominitments—are all affected by changes in socioeconomic conditions, by the number of delinquency petitions from non-police sources, by the available space in the institutions to which delinquents are cominitted, by changes in methods of reporting cases, by changes in the number and in the character of juvenile courts, by developments in the voluntary welfare agencies, and even by the degree of public concern over the amount of juvenile delinquency.

The statistics are nevertheless significant as probable indicators of a trend. If arrests of juveniles in New York City more than tripled between 1950 and 1959, it is reasonable to conclude that some of the increase in the amount of delinquency is real, not merely statistical. A Children’s Bureau report calculates that as many as 12 per cent of all juveniles have been cited at least once for court appearance between their tenth and seventeenth birthdays. And we must bear in mind that much delinquent behavior escapes the notice of the authorities.³

A clear indication that the volume of delinquency has definitely increased over recent years is that really serious offenses, assaults on the person, shootings, stabbings, and other felonies, have grown roughly in proportion to the number of minor offenses. Such offenses are less likely to be unreported, negotiated out of court, or ignored because of influence or otherwise. We must therefore conclude that conditions in our society, conditions bearing especially on the morale of our youth, have increased the tendencies to delinquent behavior. It is true that adult crimes have also increased at least as much. This fact has an important relation to youthful crime, but one comment must suffice here. When delinquency becomes habitual in a significant proportion of the young, it can be inferred that many of these young persons will graduate into adult criminality. On any accounting the situation is grievous and calls not simply for greater efforts and larger expenditures by our agencies, public and private, but even more, as we hope to show, for the development of a concerted strategy, based on the experience we have gained and on the findings of research.

Apart from those we have suggested, there is yet another reason why we must depend on broad estimates rather than on accurate measurements to assess changes in the volume of juvenile delinquency. Delinquency is a category that includes a large assortment of behavings, ranging from the merest pranks of high-spirited or adventurous youngsters to wanton crimes. It contains certain activities that are not legal offenses for adults: truancy, running away from home, insubordination to parents, endangering the health or morals of oneself or others (at least as this phrase is sometimes interpreted). Obviously so vaguely inclusive a category admits a great deal of discretion in the designation of youths as delinquent; according to the attitude of officials and the temper of the public the recorded amount of delinquency may fall or rise apart from any intrinsic change in the behavior of the young. Another important factor is the increase in traffic offenses, many of which consist in temporary “borrowing” of cars or motorcycles, illicit use of cars, and so forth. In the United States in 1961, traffic offenses constituted 27 per cent of all juvenile court cases.

Most youngsters at some time commit acts that can legally be designated delinquent. It is essential therefore to distinguish between the sporadic mischievousness of the young and the growing habit of delinquent behavior. Judges have the responsibility of making this distinction before they designate a youth as delinquent. They should also possess the capacity to diagnose the different types of delinquent behavior, though with crowded court calendars and the lack of training of some judges, this desideratum is too frequently lacking.

Skill in diagnosis is important at every stage in dealing with delinquency, which is by no means a simple or uniform malady. Various types are differently evoked, differently developed, and call for different approaches to treatment. It is no more possible to prescribe the same treatment for the different problems of delinquent youth than it is for different diseases. Without careful diagnosis we cannot hope to provide effective treatment or give the requisite aid and guidance. In our study of delinquency in New York City we were constantly impressed by the need for more careful screening before treatment. During that period (1958–1961) we found screening to be inadequate on all levels: by the police in their discretion to arrest, or to warn the offender and his parents, or to refer the case to an appropriate agency; by the courts in the process of adjudication and of disposition; by the probation division in the manner in which its members attempted to deal with their cases; by the institutions to which more serious offenders were committed; by the schools in their guidance and referral services, and also in their relegation of troublesome children to special schools or special classes; and by the welfare institutions in their programs of individual guidance and group therapy.⁴

If we are to control juvenile delinquency and redirect misguided youths we need a better understanding of their troubles and their responses to them. We need, in a word, an informed, concerted, and well-directed strategy. A main purpose of our study is to reveal this need and to offer suggestions for such a strategy.

2
High-Delinquency and Low-Delinquency Areas

There is delinquency in all areas. It is always a question of degree. Charts and maps for New York City prepared under the writer’s direction showed an irregular gradation in the number of delinquency cases between the highest and the lowest ranking areas. The gradation might well be more regular and less steep were it not for the advantage the better areas have in keeping their errant children from police notice, and from arrest when they are noticed.

Even in the finest residential areas we have occasional reports of wanton damage and riotous behavior by rampaging youth. A flagrant case followed a debutante party in Southampton, Long Island, on August 31 and September 1, 1963, when a mob of youths broke into a nearby beach house and proceeded to break things up, smashing windows and causing considerable destruction within the house. Four of the twenty or so youths involved were tried for vandalism, and acquitted. In 1965 a party of three hundred youths was invaded by the police as they were celebrating in an old house on the outskirts of the fashion able resort of East Hampton, and a number of them were held on charges varying from disorderly conduct to the possession or sale of narcotics. The Westchester Council of Social Agencies made a study of juvenile delinquency in some commuting areas and found the rates alarmingly high. A similar report comes from a commuter town in Connecticut. Obviously our official statistics present us with a somewhat one-sided picture of the situation. Since well-to-do parents are able and usually ready to make monetary reparation for vandalism and destruction by their children, such acts are likely to escape the courts.

Conditions in areas of relatively lower delinquency but in which there has also been some increase in delinquency, present a different problem from high-delinquency areas. In the latter we reasonably infer that the differential conditions, say, between high- and low-delinquency areas of a great city not only are correlated with the volume of delinquency but also are causaily related to it. This conclusion will be pointed up in Part Two of this study. In areas of low delinquency the difference between present figures and the lower ones of earlier years is susceptible of several different explanations.

In the first place, it may be due to changes occurring specifically in the affected areas. Take, for example, the increase of delinquency in small towns. We could consider the impact of an increase of mobility, or of the stronger influence of big-city culture through television and other media of communication. The cultural urbanization of rural and small-town life might diminish the distinctive morality formerly bred in these latter areas, especially among the young. We would expect then that the towns in the hinterland of great cities would be more affected, and if a study of the relative increase in delinquency in the nearer and the more distant regions supported that conclusion the evidence would be important. We do not, however, know of any such study.

In the second place, the increase in delinquency in relatively low delinquency areas might be distributed very unequally and thus be attributable to special factors in the areas of greater increase. It is conceivable, for example, that commuter areas may have a higher tendency to juvenile delinquency, because of the father’s absence from home during the whole day and sometimes the evening, or because of factors related to this mode of living. On the other hand, there is certainly evidence that some ethnic groups, especially where they are somewhat insulated by a thoroughly inculcated religious orthodoxy, tend to have lower delinquency rates while others have relatively high ones, so that the ethnic composition of an area would make a difference in the statistics.

In the third place, the relative increase shown in areas of lower delinquency may be due to the changing temper of the times everywhere. This interpretation would find a common ground for the over-all increase in juvenile delinquency in so many countries besides our own. For uncounted millions the decencies and usages of civil life were, during a long period of strain and anxiety, suspended and exchanged for the ugly necessities of killing and ravage. It was not to be expected that when that period ended people would resume their former modes of life and social attitudes. The experience of an age of unparalleled violence left its legacy of unrest, unbalance, and the confusion of morals. People were habituated to the lawlessness that goes with violence, and this has been reflected in the emphasis on violence presented through the media of mass communications—television, the movies, and the comics. The elders who have taken part in or lived through warfare are affected by their experience and this in turn is communicated to their children. Today we are confronted with the danger of another great war, which this time would obliterate total populations and destroy the civilization mankind has built through the ages. In such an atmosphere the sense of social cohesion is loosened, family ties are weakened, there is a general lowering of regard for spiritual and religious values. Crime increases, and juvenile delinquency climbs to new summits.

This type of explanation, with its various overtones, would not override the more special considerations that may account for the higher delinquency in areas subjected to particular pressures or disabilities, but it would, it is claimed, account for the over-all increase in every type of area. In Part Three we shall endeavor to sum up the case for this approach to the problem of causation.

Meanwhile we point out that not only in our high-delinquency areas but in all kinds of environments there occur the conjunctions of conditions that evoke or develop the more deep-seated maladjustments of youth. We have suggested that the volume of delinquency among upper-class youth is relatively greater than the statistics indicate—not only because the delinquency is more easily concealed and more frequently compounded, but also because the greater resources of the offenders can direct it into channels that do not directly bring it under the control of the law.

High delinquency occurs in areas of squalor and sheer poverty, with all the concomitants we have been indicating. If more delinquency is bred there, it is because all the young people in such areas are subjected to adverse conditions under which many of them are unable to accommodate themselves to lawful ways. In more favored areas many children find this accommodation relatively easy, but others, through a combination of unfortunate upbringing with a mental make-up that yields to the resulting vexations and disturbances, become no less maladjusted than those children of the slums. Two factors may be singled out as particularly important in conducing to delinquency in middleclass areas. One, which may be found in all areas, is the lack of home guidance or wise discipline—whether the failure be due to harsh treatment, the “spoiling” of the child because of inadequate restraint on wayward tendencies, neglect, or lack of affection. The importance of this factor has been brought out in many studies, and most notably by the Gluecks,¹ though their stress on it may not allow sufficiently for the environmental pressures that tend to disrupt family relationships. This subject will be examined more fully in a later section.

The other factor that looms up most significantly in middle class areas is the pressure of the operative social code on resistant youth. By the operative code we mean the prescriptions inculcated by the values that rule everyday life. We distinguish it from the formal code of morality that prescribes the general rules of right behavior. The latter code is accepted, taught, and preached—and practiced within the limits of social decency. But it is the operative code that prescribes the strategy of living and tends to be followed even when it involves infractions of the formal moral code. Public pronouncements and exhortations to follow the formal code seem to be discounted compared with the inside pressures toward pursuit of the values of the operative code.² Foremost among these values, at least in the average middle-class circle, is the estimation of success, success in making good in business, in a career, in the more lucrative professions, in the process of “rising in the world.”

There are always, however, deviant youths, who want to go their own way, perhaps to devote themselves to such unlucrative pursuits as art or music or drama, or who deride the cherished values of the business world, or who drift into becoming “playboys.” Sometimes in these situations the tensions arising in the home are heightened by neurotic or temperamental tendencies in the youth, who may then resort to delinquent habits.

The young people of middle-class or upper-class neighborhoods are no more immune than those of the slums from the behavior problems or psychic disturbances that may result in confirmed delinquency, especially when they do not receive the wise guidance and skilled treatment that might redirect their aggressiveness or waywardness into more constructive activities. Well-to-do parents, no less than poor parents, may fail to understand their children’s problems. In many instances, perhaps particularly with the commuting class, they see less of their children than do slum parents. Some crucial situation, such as an unfortunate sexual experience or a school failure or a foolish debt incurred by the youth, may trigger the fatal collision between parent and child that ends in the latter’s dedication to rebelliousness and the total rejection of authority. Occasionally the press reports a serious crime committed by a youth—or youths—who seemed to have every advantage of fortune, revealing a glimpse of some deep disorder beneath the surface. The most famous of such cases was that of Leopold and Loeb, who out of prurient curiosity and unmitigated sadism murdered a child. With every gift of position and intelligence these two had escaped the discipline and lacked the guidance that might have averted the tragedy.

There is no class distinction in the need for watchful guidance in a spirit of affection. The crucial situation that marks the parting of the ways between an honorable or a delinquent career occurs in every environment. We were impressed a number of years ago by a report on a confirmed delinquent who had been a handsome and happy youngster, well-behaved and successful at school. In an accident at play the point of a knife pierced an eye, and the resulting disfigurement preyed on his feelings so that he became morose and withdrawn, lost interest in his work and play, and ended as an adjudged delinquent. One could but surmise what a difference it might have made if some sympathetic and understanding counselor had been with him through the time of crisis.

High Delinquency Areas—The Complex of Residence and Residents

A considerable amount of research has been devoted to the conditions associated with delinquency, both the conditions under which individual cases occur and those of areas in which the volume of delinquency is high or above average. Since individual cases are excessively variant and often quite complex, we shall consider at this stage the latter line of inquiry, especially as it throws considerable light on the former.

There is everywhere a marked disparity between the amount of juvenile delinquency recorded in the various areas of cities, and the highest volume is nearly always found in the poorest sectors. This fact raises two preliminary questions. In the first place, every area combines two major constituents: the physical environment itself, with its housing conditions, its amenities or lack thereof, its higher or lower rental values, and so forth; and also the demographic aspect—the characteristics of the groups who inhabit it, their wealth or poverty, their social status, their ethnic derivation, and so on. Should we then attribute the higher or lower delinquency rates to one or to the other of these factors, or again to the combination of the two? Has either factor priority over the other as an explanation of the delinquency level? Different answers have be...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Part One: THE ASSOCIATED CONDITIONS
• Part Two: LEADS TO CAUSATION
• Part Three: STRATEGIC APPLICATIONS
• Notes
• Index