Eleanor Glueck

After Conduct of Discharged Offenders

This book is published under the auspices of the Department of Criminal Science of the Faculty of Law in the University of Cambridge. Professor and Mrs. Glueck are well known in this country as well as in America for their painstaking investigations in Criminology and their forward outlook on problems connected with crime and criminals. The book, although small, is full of facts and information.

Identification of Potential Delinquents At 2-3 Years of Age

N the July 1963 issue of Crime and Delinquency, Maude M. Craig and Selma J. IGlick of the Research Department of the New York City Youth Board presented a paper entitled &dquo;Ten Years’ Experience with the Glueck Social Prediction Table&dquo;. It describes an experiment undertaken by the Youth Board in 1952 to ascertain the extent to which predictions based on the Glueck Prediction Table (ref. 1, p. 261) (originally encompassing five interpersonal family factors-affection of father for boy, affection of mother for boy, discipline of boy by father, supervision of boy by mother and family cohesiveness), if applied at school entrance (five-and-a-half to six years), would correctly discriminate between true delinquents and true nondelinquents. The subjects were 301 boys, followed up to age 17 (which marks the end of juvenile court jurisdiction in New York State). Although the 1963 report did not present the evidence on the entire group of boys studied-since 59 of them had not then yet reached the age of 17-the results were already significant. Since then, however, the Youth Board has made a fuller presentation of the findings in A Manual of Procedures for Application of the Glueck Prediction Table (ref. 2). This report, already well publicised, indicates that of 33 boys identified at school entrance as having a high potential for delinquency, 25 (or 84.8 per cent) actually did become persistent offenders before age 17; and of 243 identified on school entrance as unlikely to become true delinquents, 97.1 per cent remained non-offenders, although residing in areas with high delinquency rates. Of 25 boys who were placed in an ambiguous group having about an even chance of delinquency or non-delinquency-and therefore not clearly identifiable-nine actually became delinquent and 16 did not. The Youth Board’s results are well supported by a number of retrospective applications of the table to many small samples of delinquents (refs. 3, 4, 5), and by a prospective study made by the Commissioners’ Youth Council of Washington, D.C., in a research called &dquo;The Maximum Benefits Project&dquo;. In the Washington study the predictive table was applied to 179 boys and girls in two schools in

Efforts To Identify Delinquents

description was given of what is now called the Glueck Social Prediction Table for Identifying Potential Delinquents, and the findings of several retrospective applications of this Table were briefly summarized. As the device approaches validation, interest in it is becoming greater and, although experimentation must continue, this seems an appropriate time to summarize the efforts to check it, especially as the chapter in Predicting Delinquency and Crime (1) entitled &dquo;Checkings of Table Identifying Potential Delinquents&dquo; was prepared at an earlier stage and does not, therefore, incorporate the most recent attempts to check the Table.

Status of Glueck Prediction Studies

The following article was presented to the International Congress on Criminology, London, September, 1955. The author, Research Associate in Criminology, at the Harvard Law School, is coauthor with her husband, Professor Sheldon Glueck, of the following works: Co-author with SHELDON GLUECK of 500 CRIMINAL CAREERS, 1930, New York, Alfred A. Knopf; ONE THOUSAND JUVENILE DELINQUENTS, 1934, Cambridge, Harvard University Press; FIVE HUNDRED DELINQUENT WOMEN, 1934, New York, Alfred A. Knopf; PREVENTING CRIME (Editors), 1936, New York, McGraw-Hill Book Co.; LATER CRIMINAL CAREERS, 1937, New York, The Commonwealth Fund; JUVENILE DELINQUENTS GROWN UP, 1940, New York, The Commonwealth Fund; CRIMINAL CAREERS IN RETROSPECT, 1943, New York, The Commonwealth Fund; AFTERCONDUCT OF DISCHARGED OFFENDERS, 1945, New York and London, Macmillan Co.; UNRAVELING JUVENILE DELINQUENCY, 1950, New York, The Commonwealth Fund; DELINQUENTS IN THE MAKING, 1952, New York, Harper and Bros.; PHYSIQUE AND DELINQUENCY, 1956, New York. Harper and Brothers.-EDITOR.

EARLY DETECTION OF FUTURE DELINQUENTS

This article by Sheldon Glueck and Eleanor T. Glueck embodies a comparison of the total discriminative capacity of various combinations among fifteen factors significantly differentiating delinquents from non-delinquents. The authors, Roscoe Pound Professor of Law, and Research Associate, in the Harvard Law School, are frequent contributors to this Journal and they require no introduction-EDITOR.

A Preview of "Family Environment and Delinquency"

HE book FAMILY ENVIRONMENT AND DELINQUENCY, which Professor Sheldon T Glueck jand I completed in March 1961 and which is scheduled for publication in May 1962,<~ grew out of two prior studies-UNRAVELING JUVENILE DELINQUENCY~2~ and PHYSIQUE AND DELINQUENCY.(3) The new work is a companion volume to PHYSIQUE AND DELINQUENCY, which was an analysis of the differences in the physiologic-psychologic characteristics between the 500 delinquents of UNRAVELING and a matched sample of 500 non-delinquents of four constitutional types-mesomorphic, endomorphic, ectomorphic and balanced. PHYSIQUE AND DELINQUENCY served as a preliminary to determining the impact of these differences not only on the delinquency of boys of the various physique types but also on the behavioural response of the delinquents of each physique type to certain environmental (largely f amilial) pressures. The 66 characteristics studied are appended to this paper (Appendix A). They encompass physical and neurological conditions, constituents of intelligence, emotional dynamics, appetitive-aesthetic tendencies, and personality orientation.

Delinquents and nondelinquents in depressed areas: Some guidelines for community preventive action.

Attention is directed to the reasons why all children from unwholesome homes do not become delinquent and why there are children from “good” families who do become delinquent. With these findings as a basis, foci of communitywide preventive programs that would take into realistic account the needs of special groups of delinquents and non-delinquents are suggested.Attention is directed to the reasons why all children from unwholesome homes do not become delinquent and why there are children from “good” families who do become delinquent. With these findings as a basis, foci of communitywide preventive programs that would take into realistic account the needs of special groups of delinquents and non-delinquents are suggested.

Family Environment and Delinquency

The International Library of Sociology (ILS) is the most important series of books on sociology ever published. Founded in the 1940s by Karl Mannheim, the series became the forum for pioneering research and theory, marked by comparative approaches and analysis of new disciplines, such as the sociology of youth and culture. Spanning volumes by Parsons, Dickinson and Ossowski, the history of the ILS is the history of modern sociology.

Unraveling Juvenile Delinquency.

This is the sort of American book which makes British social scientists writhe with envy. It is the record of a sustained and elaborate criminological research project, lasting ten years and costing three-quarters of a million dollars. As might be expected, this is therefore as good a book of its type as is likely to be written. However, it adheres to the orthodox methodology for the study of crime, and there is every reason for feeling that this is no longer adequate.