Sheldon 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

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.

Project for fundamental criminologic research in Puerto rico

Beginning with a discussion of major American approaches to research into the etiology of delinquency, the author criticizes certain unilateral theories. He describes the main features ofUnraveling Juvenile Delinquency, a major work by his wife and himself, and summarizes its chief findings. These demonstrate the great variety of etiologic patterns and the childhood roots of typical delinquency. The author calls for a Comparative Criminology, pointing out that only through replication of a basic research in regions and cultures differing from those in which the original investigation was made can there be hope of turning Criminology into something approaching a true science. He then discusses the Glueck Social Prediction Table and its validations. He concludes with hints regarding the prevention of delinquency.

Roscoe Pound's Writings in Criminal Justice

THE editor has asked me to select some of Roscoe Pound’s writings pertaining to criminal justice broadly construed. With such an embarrassment of riches, the selection has not been easy. Readers familiar with Dean Pound’s writings will no doubt wish that other samples of Poundiana had been included. The first item here presented is the justly famous piece, &dquo;The Causes of Popular Dissatisfaction with the Administration of Justice,&dquo; first published in 1906. It is devastating in condemnation of &dquo;the sporting theory of justice.&dquo; The second article (also 1906) is the germinal paper on the tough persistency of &dquo;The Spirit of the Common Law&dquo; despite a period of ultra-individualist and antisocial

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.