Joan McCord

Some child-rearing antecedents of criminal behavior in adult men.

Records collected during childhood and coded prior to knowledge of adult behavior provided information about the childhood homes of 201 men. Thirty years later, information about criminal behavior was collected from court records. Multiple regression and discriminant function analyses indicate that six variables describing family atmosphere during childhood--mothers selfconfidence, fathers deviance, parental aggressiveness, maternal affection, parental conflict, and supervision--have an important impact on subsequent behavior.

Advancing knowledge about the onset of delinquency and crime.

Our main concern is to advance knowledge about the onset of delinquency and crime. When a person commits an offense for the first time, it is only future experience that can establish with certainty whether that offense was the onset of a persistent and serious criminal career or whether it was simultaneously the person’s first and last offense. However, the age at which a first offense occurs is one of the best predictors (or even the best predictor; see Blumstein, Farrington, & Moitra, 1985) of the future course of the criminal career.

Cures That Harm: Unanticipated Outcomes of Crime Prevention Programs

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.

Self-Esteem and Delinquency

Cross-lagged panel correlation technique is used to examine whether self-esteem has a greater effect on delinquency than delinquency has on self-esteem. Analysis of a nationwide study of tenth-grade boys shows that self-esteem is the more powerful causal factor, even when initial levels of delinquency are held constant. This result, however, is found to be stronger in the lower class than in the upper class. These data are interpreted as lending greater support to Kaplans theory of the self-enhancing nature of delinquent behavior than to the idea of reflected appraisals.

Violence and childhood in the inner city

1. Preface Joan McCord 2. Violence and the inner-city street code Elijah Anderson 3. The embeddedness of child and adolescent development: a community-level perspective on urban violence Robert J. Sampson 4. Placing American urban violence in context Joan McCord 5. Neuro-psychology, antisocial behavior, and neighborhood context Terrie E. Moffitt 6. Development of psychological mediators of violence in urban youth Ronald G. Slaby 7. Understanding and preventing child abuse in urban settings Felton Earls and Jacqueline Barnes 8. Intervening to prevent childhood aggression in the inner-city Nancy G. Guerra.

Parental Behavior in the Cycle of Aggression

In the study described here, a longitudinal, prospective approach was used to compare men who had been raised by aggressive, by punitive, and by neither aggressive nor punitive parents. The purpose of these comparisons was to attempt to identify processes that might account for intergenerational transmission of antisocial behavior. Men who had been reared in aggressive families tended to be expressive as well as to commit crimes. Men reared by punitive parents showed a tendency to be egocentric. I therefore suggest that parental aggressiveness may be transmitted through two messages. The first is the message that expressive behavior, including injurious actions, is normal and often justified. The second is the message that egocentrism is both normal and virtuous.

Questioning the Value of Punishment

The author critically examines and rejects the claim that physical punishments lead to aggression through the acceptance of norms of violence. She proposes an alternate theory to account for how children acquire norms and why they become violent. The proposed Construct Theory explains why abused, neglected, and rejected children—as well as those who are punished—tend to become anti-social.

The Cycle of Crime and Socialization Practices

Crime appears to be transmitted through families. This article evaluates biogenetic and sociological interpretations in the light of evidence drawn from a prospective longitudinal study. Subjects for the study came from a larger investigation of males who had been in a program designed to prevent delinquency. At the time of their introduction to the prevention program, the boys ranged in age from five to thirteen. Although the treatment program failed to better the lives of its charges, it left a legacy of carefully documented case materials that are used here to examine interacting effects of biological and environmental conditions that appear to promote or retard transmission of aggressive antisocial behavior. The evidence suggests that aggressive models promote criminality and that maternal behavior can reduce the probability that a son will imitate a criminal father.

Boys' Disruptive Behaviour, School Adjustment, and Delinquency: The Montreal Prevention Experiment:

The authors discuss interim goals for prevention programmes designed to reduce antisocial behaviour. They describe effects of one such programme in which kindergarten teachers identified their most disruptive boys, some of whom were randomly allocated to a two-year treatment programme. The programme provided assistance in family management to the parents and in social skills to the boys, who were between the ages of 7 and 9 years during the treatment programme. By the age of 12, as compared with their peers who were not assigned to the treatment group, boys in the treatment group were doing better in school and evidencing less antisocial behaviour.

Parent-Adolescent Relationships.

Introduction. Section I. Introductory Issues. Chapter 1. The needs, benefits, and perils of close relationships. J. A. Simpson & S. Tran. Chapter 2. The changing social context of relationships. C. M. Bryant, J. M. Bolland, L. Burton, T. Hurt, & B. M. Bryant. Chapter 3. Studying close relationships: Methodological Challenges and Advances. J. A. Feeney. Section II - Types of Relationships. Chapter 4. Marital relations. P. Noller. Chapter 5. Parent-child relationships: Contemporary Perspectives. R. D. Parke, K. Morris, T. Schofield, M. Leidy, M. Miller, & M. Flyr. Chapter 6. Parent-adolescent relationships. W. A. Collins & B. Laursen. Chapter 7. Sibling relationships in childhood and adolescence. S. M McHale, J. Kim, & S. Whiteman. Chapter 8. Adult friendship: A Decade Review. K. Ueno & R. G. Adams. Chapter 9. Interethnic relationships. S. O. Gaines Jr., R. A. R. Gurung, Y.Lin, & N. Pouli. Section III. Relationship Processes . Chapter 10. Attachment across the lifepan. C. Hazan, M. Campa, & N. Gur-Yaish. Chapter 11. Intimacy and the self: An Iterative Model of the Self and Close Relationships. S. L. Gable & H. T. Reis. Chapter 12. Passionate love, sexual desire, & mate-selection: Cross-cultural & Historical Perspectives. E. Hatfield & R. L. Rapson. Chapter 13. Mate-selection: Adaptive Problems and Evolved Cognitive Programs. D. Lieberman. Chapter 14. Sexuality in close relationships. S. Sprecher. Chapter 15. Emotion and cognition in close relationships. J. Fitness. Chapter 16. What partners do to maintain their close relationships. K. Dindia & T. M. Emmers-Sommer. Chapter 17. From bickering to battering: Destructive Conflict Processes in Intimate Relationships. Linda J. Roberts. Chapter 18. Relationship dissolution: Antecedents, Processes and Consequences. A. L. Vangelisti