Simon Dinitz

Self-Concept as an Insulator Against Delinquency

mHIS study is concerned with sixth-grade boys 1 in the highest delinquency areas in Columbus, Ohio, who have not become delinquent and who are not expected to become delinquent. What insulates an early teen-age boy against delinquency? Is it possible to identify certain components that enable young adolescent boys to develop or maintain non-delinquent habits and patterns of behavior in the growing up process.

Schizophrenics in the community : an experimental study in the prevention of hospitalization

This highly successful book gives students a brood understanding of the nature, origins, development, and problems of a modern industrial society. Material from anthropology, psychology, sociology, economics, and political science is used where appropriate. The book has been thoroughly updated with much of the material rewritten to reflect new areas of interest such as economic growth, race relations, and international relations. Recent events such as the 1964 tax revision and the war on poverty are discussed in some detail. Two-thirds of the illustrations are new; a bibliography is included at the end.

Preferences for male or female children: traditional or affectional?

A questionnaire was administered to 380 university students, about equally divided between males and females, to determine the respondents preference for a child of a particular sex. When respondents were asked to cite preference if they could have only 1 child, 92% of the males and 66% of the females preferred their only child to be a boy. Although the response was overwhelmingly in favor of a boy, males and females did differ significantly at the .0001 level. When respondents were asked to cite sex preference for first child, 62.1% of the males and 58.6% of the females perferred a boy, while 33.5% and 35.2% of the males and females, respectively, said it made little difference to them. When those who took the egalitarian position were forced to state a preference, most of the males wanted a boy and the females wanted a girl. When the desired sex compostion of future families was analyzed, over 55% wanted an equal number of boys and girls. More than 34% wanted a predominantly male family in contrast to only 6% who preferred a predominantly female family. As hypothesized, Catholic and Jewish respondents showed a stronger male preference than Protestants. In addition, significantly fewer Protestants had a definite preference for the sex of their first child. Neither the aspirational level of the students nor the satisfaction of their affectional relationships with pa rents, siblings, and peers contributed to the explanation of sex preferences. 4 areas of further study are suggested: 1) a more realistic cultural evaluation of some current psychiatric concepts--particularly the Oedipus complex; 2) the treatment accorded children by parents with strong sex preferences; 3) the relation between marital role conceptions and sex preference of children; and 4) the implications for the sex ratio when male sex preference is reinforced by medical technology which can predict and perhaps even control the sex of a child.

Perceptions of Stigma Following Public Intervention for Delinquent Behavior

The labelling hypothesis maintains that being publicly identified as deviant results in a “spoiled” public identity. It contends that being labelled “deviant” results in a degree of social liability (i.e., exclusion from participation in certain conventional groups or activities) which would not occur if the deviance were not made a matter of public knowledge. It further suggests that the social liability incurred by being labelled “deviant” has the ultimate effect of reinforcing the deviance. This study examines the extent to which delinquent boys perceive having incurred any social liability as a consequence of public intervention. The data indicate that only a very small proportion of the boys interviewed felt seriously handicapped by their encounter with the police or juvenile court. The subjects did not perceive any substantial change in interpersonal relationships with family, friends, or teachers. Greatest social liability was perceived in those situations of an impersonal nature in which ones character tends to be inferred from public documents like court or police records rather than through personal acquaintance with the person.

Geographic and Seasonal Variations in Births

IN previous investigations we have attempte,d to demonstrate the relationship of climatic variations during the first trimester of pregnancy to the b,irth of mentally deficient children. In the most recent study we tested the hypothesis that above-average summer temperatures during the third month of pregnancy, the critical period of fetal central nervous system development, are associated with an increased risk of being born mentally defective. This hypothesis was substantiated for the period of 1913-48 based on the date of birth, and therefore of conception, of mentally defective children admitted to the Columbus State

Community mental health as a boundaryless and boundary-busting system.

Every system of deviance definition and management must address three basic questions: (1) Who shall be defined as deviant and in need of management? (2) Who shall be the legitimate agents in defining and managing the deviant, and what shall be their respective roles? (3) What shall be done to or for the deviant? In contrast to both the legal and traditional mental health systems, which oifer delimited responses to these questions, the community mental health system, in both philosophy and practice, offers such all-inclusive responses that it is developing into a boundaryless system of deviance definition and management. The community mental health approach unavoidably, if not deliberately, confronts and breaks down the boundaries of other deviance management systems and appropriates some of their territories. Of particular significance are the implications of these developments for the future articulation of the legal and mental health systems.

Social Class, Expectations, and Performance of Mental Patients

The influence of social class and expectations on the posthospital performance of sixty-two married female mental patients is examined here. Both class and expectations were posited as interrelated determinants of performance. The results indicate that this thesis is highly questionable. Social class did not correlate significantly with performance; patient expectations, on the other hand, were related to such performance in the working class but not in the middle class. These finding suggest that for these cases, disease manifestations are more significant than class and expectations as criteria of posthospital adjustment.

The Incapacitation of the Dangerous Offender: A Statistical Experiment:

Wilson and van den Haag, in particular, have proposed a crime prevention and control approach based on the principle of incapacita tion. By incapacitation, these writers, and others, mean the mandatory imprisonment of career and repetitively violent offenders for lengthy periods. Such an approach, at the very least, would preclude the commission of street crimes by careerists for specified lengths of time. Several studies have attempted to validate the incapacitation model. Estimates of reduced crime as a result of incapacitation range from an improbable 80 percent to under 10 percent. These estimates are based on various assumptions and in not even one previous study were data collected specifically to test this model of crime prevention. This investigation represents a focused empirical attempt to evaluate the effectiveness of the incapacitation strategy. The study involved the universe of adult offenders who had been indicted for violent crimes in Franklin County, Ohio in 1973. We tested a series of hypothetical sentencing policies from the most stringent—a five year mandatory sentence on any prior felony conviction, whether violent or not—to far lighter sentences to determine the effects of adult incapacitation-oriented policies on this cohort of violators. The results suggest that the most stringent option would have prevented no more than 4.0 percent of the violent crimes in Franklin County in 1973. The reasons for this minimal impact of the incapacitation strategy are discussed. A short note suggests the impact of extending incapacitation policies to the juvenile system. 1. The cohort consists of all violent felony cases completed in 1973. Not all the cases began in 1973. Half the individuals were first booked in 1973 (50.0 percent), most of the rest in 1972 (45.6 percent) and the remainder in 1971 or before (4.4 percent). For simplicity in the study, the population is called the 1973 cohort and treated as if all cases began in 1973. This determination does not influence the re sults of the study, since the hypothetical in capacitation sentence is imposed on each per sons record individually.

Managerial Styles and Institutional Control

Based on a 30-year examination of managerial styles at a maximum-security training school in Ohio, this study examines three managerial styles that emerged: charismatic, bureaucratic, and technocratic. Extensive interviewing with staff members, some of whom had been present during the 30-year period, identified that the three basic managerial styles could be further divided into five categories: (a) charismatic control, (b) charismatic reform, (c) bureaucratic control, (d) bureaucratic reform, and (e) technocratic control. The thesis proposed in this article is that the management styles will, to a large degree, effect the quality of life that takes place within juvenile correctional institutions, especially training schools. The various management styles are evaluated concerning what they contributed to the quality of institutional care, and a number of general managerial recommendations based on the findings of this study are offered to guide the improvement of juvenile care in long-term training schools.

In Fear of Each Other

In a futile effort to cope with the conventional crime problem, the U.S. sends more people to prison for longer terms than any Western country. Now, with the new federal and state commitment to mandatory minimum sentences and to enhanced penalties for crimes involving the possession of weapons, the penal system is near the breaking point. Thus, in a surprise and unprecedented action, the Reagan administration on March 4, 1983 instituted a civil lawsuit charging that two prisons in Hawaii cause inmates “to suffer grievous harm.” In the first suit ever filed by Attorney General William French Smith under the 1980 Civil Rights of Institutionalized Persons Act, the U.S. Justice Department alleged “egregious or flagrant conditions” and the following abuses and violations: illegal segregation by race and national origin; systematic brutality by prison staff members; inadequate protection from inmate predators; inadequate protection of female inmates against sexual abuses by prison guards and inadequate sanitation; excessive use of tranquilizers; grossly inferior mental, medical and dental care; violations of inmate mail and visitation rights; inadequate food and clothing and exposure to life-threatening fire hazards (New York Times, 1983).