Marshall B. Clinard

The Process of Urbanization and Criminal Behavior

The problem was the incidence of urban characteristics in the life-experience of properety offenders and nonoffenders from areas of varying degrees of urbanization. Rural offenders were found to have had greater mobility than nonoffenders, their attitudes toward others tended to be impersonal, and they were not generally incorporated into the community where the offense occurred. Networks of criminal relationships were found to vary directly with the amount of urbanization of the areas from which offenders came. Delinquent gangs were not an important factor in the lives of farm offenders but were more so among village offenders. Offenders from areas of slight and moderate urbanization, in contrast to city offenders, were not definite criminal social types. Rural offenders were legal criminals but not criminal but not criminals in a sociological sense. Farm offenders did not conceive of their acts as crimes or of themselves as criminals. Among village offenders there was less of the fortuitous element in the criminal act and more of a realization that they were commintting an act against society. Definite organized criminal behavior was the outstanding characteristic of the offenders from the cities. As long as there exists a predominant measure of personal relationship and informal social control in the farm and village areas, ti will be impossible for a separate criminal culture to exist. Without thew presence of criminal social types, the volume of crime committed by rural residents will continue to be small as compared with that of more urban areas.

Rural Criminal Offenders

The rural offender has been largely neglected in criminological research. Extensive mobility, resulting in recklessness and irresponsibility, appears characteristics of the lives of farm offenders. They conceive of themselves as mobile persons and exhibit many indications of an impersonal conception of the world and emancipation from their home communities. A large proportion committed offenses outside of their home communities. Differential association with criminal behavior is not a typical characteristic. Two-thirds and never associated with delinquent boys gangs, and a like number were alone when first arrested. Farm offenders do not exhibit the characteristics of a definite criminal social type, for (1) their criminal behavior did not start early, (2) they exhibit little progressive knowledge of criminal techniques and crime in general, (3) crime is not the sole means of livelihood, and (4) they do not conceive of themselves as criminals. Property offenses committed by rural offenders are, in general, actually not criminal behavior in a sociological sense.

Secondary Community Influences and Juvenile Delinquency

The results of such one-sided emphases are seen in the panaceas that are recommended. Those who look at the individual personality believe that testing and clinical guidance programs in our schools should be stressed. Many stress more and better psychiatrists, psychoanalysts, and psychologists who, by diagnosing and treating the deviations and stresses and strains of youth, will put them soundly on the road to social health. Some who regard the family as the basic cause stress family training and counseling, while the more radical believe that the parents should be punished. Those who see the nexus of the problem in the boys gang believe that organized recreation and the diverting of the delinquent group into