munity, the adolescent peer group, the school, the police and other agencies of correction, but the latent and generally unknown ways in which these institutions alienate and estrange young people.

These institutions and agencies are all too frequently and systematically mishandling the children with minor difficulties who come into their hands. Such failures contribute to the confirmation of delinquency and in themselves offer a focal target for programs of prevention.

The problem must be attacked where the delinquency is produced, and this involves two major considerations. In preventive terms, a major focus should be directed upon those areas and regions which are disproportionately productive of crime and delinquency. And, secondly, we must re-examine and increase the capacity of the agencies of criminal justice which now too frequently contribute to an aggravation of the problem by the purely negative measures of arrest and detention.

AMOUNT AND DISTRIBUTION OF DELINQUENCY

Where Are The Delinquents?

The increase in juvenile delinquency rates has been documented by the FBI in the Uniform Crime Reports, and by most local jurisdictions over the country. All reporting agencies agree on the upward trend, but reliable estimates of the rate of increase vary due to the inherent difficulties of gathering accurate criminal statistics and due to local conditions. More crimes are committed than are known to the police, more are known to the police than recorded, more are recorded than lead to arrest, and there are more arrests than court referrals or convictions. The enormous gap between crimes known to the police and convictions has been cited by many authorities. In 1942, a comprehensive study of the quality of criminal statistics and police procedures found that of all crimes known to the police, arrests were made in only 25 percent of the cases, convictions were obtained in only 5.5 percent of the cases, and prison sentences resulted in only 3.5 percent of these cases.1

Nevertheless, the reports of crimes known to the police and the number of arrests made and reported to the FBI remain the best criminal statistics available, even though they do not report a "true" crime rate. At best any crime statistic is only an index of the actual number of crimes committed. Correspondingly, the best single index is that crime rate which is closest to the actual criminal act and which has not been compromised by intervening procedures.

The Uniform Crime Reports of the Federal Bureau of Investigation for 1955 give us a broad outline of the magnitude and scope of the crime and juvenile delinquency problem and of what may be expected in the immediate years ahead. The report indicates that, "Population has increased 9 percent and crime has increased 26 percent since 1950. Measuring crimes against units of population, the 1955 crime rate is 15.9 percent above the 1950 rate. Crimes per 100,000 inhabitants in 1950 numbered 1,187.8 as compared with 1,377.2 in 1955. Arrests of young persons under 18 increased 11.4 percent in 1,162 cities in 1955. In 276 of these cities (over 25,000 population) such arrests rose 10.5 percent, but the increase was 15.6 percent in 886 cities (under 25,000 population).”

'C. C. Van Vechten, "Differential Criminal Case Mortality in Selected Jurisdictions," Amer. Soc. Rev. (Dec., 1942), p. 837.

These figures have a special significance for students of juvenile and teen-age crime for they represent the disproportionately increasing role played by young people in the total crime picture. In terms of the careers of those offenders currently in the hands of the agencies of criminal justice, this is the point in their life times which is the end of juvenile crime careers and more frequently the beginning of life in adult crime. The following FBI figures for 1955 reveal the seriousness of juvenile and teen-age crime:

* Base numbers not readily derivable from source: Uniform Crime Reports, Vol. XXVI, No. 2, 1955.

Experience and research have revealed that problem behavior in young people, while it may stem from an early history of family maladjustment or local neighborhood and school difficulties, becomes a matter of public attention during the years of early adolescence. In nearly every court record of adolescent misbehavior there is a prior history of difficulty which commands serious attention only after the fact. However, it should be noted that the increasing prominence of young persons in the over-all crime picture reflects a new and ever larger role which young persons are playing in the commission of the more serious crimes.

Preliminary figures just released (Dec., 1956) by the FBI for the year 1956, reveal a new and even sharper upward trend in major crimes. The total major crimes for 1956 will stand at more than 2,850,000. This is an increase of 12% over 1955. Correspondingly, the increases in crime among juvenile and teen-age groups will surpass the figures for 1955.

It has generally been estimated that 1 percent of the young people between the ages of 10 and 17 represented the country's annual volume of delinquency. This figure has now been adjusted upward, and it is estimated that as many as 2 percent of all the youngsters of this age become delinquent during the course of every year. This is a conservative figure. An estimate of the U. S. Children's Bureau in 1953 reported that over 1,000,000 juveniles and teen-agers were handled by the police. Of these, only about one-third were brought before the courts. By 1954 the Children's Bureau reported that 475,000 boys and girls between the ages of 7 and 17 were processed by the nation's courts, and a total of more than one and one-third million were dealt with by the police. The Children's Bureau further estimates that at least another half-million problem children escaped official attention.

JUVENILE DELINQUENCY AS GROUP BEHAVIOR

The juvenile courts deal with the delinquent individual and seldom come to grips with the social realities that have produced him. Yet the court records reveal that the individual delinquent is, in most cases, a group offender. The early studies of Breckenridge and Abbott, of Healy and Bronner, Thrasher, Shaw, and Schulman, demonstrate conclusively that juvenile delinquency is, for the most part, a group activity. The few who are apprehended as lone offenders it later appears have also been under the influence of friends or associates, if not an organized gang.

Nearly 90 percent of the juveniles brought before the Family Court of Cook County (Chicago and environs) for all offenses had one or more accomplices in crime. When these figures are refined to reflect only property offenses, the percentage of group offenders rises to more than 93 percent.

Since most juvenile crime consists of property offenses, it is apparent that juvenile theft is by and large a group phenomenon. Furthermore, the significance of the gang as the chief source of delinquent influence is underlined when it is noted that in well over half the cases of property offenses committed by juveniles, three or more participants were known by the police to have been involved.1

At any given time a substantial number of young people, through delinquency, neglect, or some form of dependency, are confined in public institutions. This group is of special significance, for from its ranks comes the largest proportion of repeating offenders. There were 160,621 persons, 19 years of age or younger, confined in correctional and custodial institutions in 1950, distributed as follows:

*Source: U. S. Bureau of Census, Vol. IV, Special Reports Chap. C., "Institutional Population," USGPO, 1953.

It has been established by numerous follow-up studies that between 60 percent and 80 percent of all releases from juvenile correctional institutions later establish adult criminal records. The child who must be removed from the home for reasons of parental neglect or cruelty illustrates the special consequences of institutionalization. These children may not, in themselves, be delinquent, but after being placed in institutions or into a series of foster homes, exhibit delinquent tendencies. Studies of foster home children and children raised in institutions reveal that the amount of delinquency in these children is disproportionate to their numbers. The same holds true for children separated from their parents at early ages or for any considerable length of time. Children victimized by all such deprivations are a disproportionate source of delinquency. While it is often 'National Commission on Law Observance and Enforcement, Report on the Causes of Crime, Vol. XI (USGPO, 1931).

necessary to remove children from unfavorable family and community situations, it is equally certain that there are few successful alternatives to a normal family life for children. The alternatives more frequently than not have contributed to the development of delinquent careers. The tensions engendered within the child by such unstable family and institutional experiences are a prime source of confusion and emotional disturbance. Such children have not had an opportunity to develop the capacity to resist the hostile and discordant influences of the wider community.

THE EMERGING METROPOLITAN COMMUNITY: STRESSES AND STRAINS WHICH PRODUCE DELINQUENCY

Increasing amounts of juvenile crime cannot be explained as a mere function of the increase of population, as indicated above. In fact, the delinquency rate is increasing five times as rapidly as the rate of population increase. Between 1948 and 1954 delinquency increased by 58 percent, whereas the population 10 to 17 years of age increased by only 13 percent. If this trend is to continue, and every indication points to this development, the population 10 to 17 years of age will have doubled its delinquency rate by 1960.1

From the summary given above a number of conclusions can be drawn: (1) Crime rates in general are increasing, and juvenile and teen-age crime rates are increasing faster than adult crime rates, particularly in those classifications designated as major crimes. (2) Juvenile crime rates are increasing at a greater rate in suburban areas adjacent to major urban centers although the urban centers continue to produce the vast majority of all crime. (3) Since many jurisdictions do not contribute data to the FBI and Children's Bureau, particularly the smaller or newer jurisdictions, and since the Uniform Crime Reports exclude crimes under federal jurisdiction, it is clear that all the estimates given above are extremely conservative. In terms of practical considerations, and in planning for action, the crime rate per 100,000 population previously cited could confidently be increased by one-third to one-half, and more than proportionately increased for juvenile offenders, in order to approximate the "true" crime rates that really obtain.

In order to assess the true magnitude of the juvenile delinquency problem we must examine more basic population and community conditions with which this problem is highly correlated. Whenever certain definable population and social conditions obtain, juvenile delinquency and teen-age crime can be correspondingly noted. Past studies have shown: (1) that population movements in connection with urban growth and metropolitan development are highly associated with the problem of juvenile delinquency, (2) that these movements highlight certain geographic areas as disproportionately contributory to higher rates of delinquency, and (3) that any program of action must address the problem in these more basic terms and at the points where these basic population and social processes are producing the conditions of which juvenile delinquency is an overt expression.

'Statistics based on U. S. Children's Bureau studies.

As we have observed earlier, 50 percent of all juvenile and teen-age offenders are reported from those portions of the American community in which lives only 25 percent of the youthful population. This distribution is, of course, a direct function of the over-all structure, age, mobility and residence of the population. Urbanization through the years has been the outgrowth of broad social and economic processes related to the industrialization of the United States, accelerated by two major wars. These processes have produced an unexpected and unplannedfor growth in population. Indeed, an earlier declining birth-rate has been reversed in the post-war period and has produced an unprecedented number of children currently entering the age groups among whom are reported increasing numbers of juvenile delinquents. It is the combination of changing population and growing urbanism, unsettling and disturbing local community life, that constitutes the core of the juvenile delinquency problem.

Every city of any size in the United States has its traditional areas of high delinquency. Numerous studies have fully documented this fact and have arrived at similar conclusions.1 These general conclusions are: (1) Rates of delinquency vary widely in different neighborhoods of every urban center. (2) The highest delinquency rates are in the low-income areas of the older, inner sections of cities. Delinquency rates decrease with distance from these sections. (3) Exceptions in this general pattern prove the rule. They are accounted for by the presence of large industrial or commercial sub-centers, and delinquency rates decrease with distance from these sub-centers. (4) Areas with high truancy rates are also characterized by high rates of juvenile and adult court commitments. (5) Areas with high male juvenile delinquency rates also have high female juvenile delinquency rates. (6) Areas with high juvenile delinquency rates in 1900 also had high juvenile delinquency rates in 1915, 1930, and, most recently, in the period from 1945 to 1951.2 Finally, (7) juvenile delinquency rates for the various national and racial groups decrease as their residential distance from the industrial-commercial center or sub-centers increases.

The recent Chicago study cited offers further corroboration of this pattern of delinquency distribution:

"Using the city-wide boy delinquency rate as a norm of delinquency incidence, comparisons may be made of the various areas of the city. Of the 75 community areas only 22 had rates higher than the city-wide rate of 5.7 delinquents per 100 boys in the population. This indicates a concentration of delinquents in a small number of areas. The nine areas with the highest rates contain 16 percent of the city's boy population ages 10 through 16 but had 38 percent of the delinquents. Of the 8,000 alleged boy delinquents (... brought for the first time before the Family Court of Cook County on a petition alleging delinquency) in the seven year series (1945-51) over 3,000 were residents of these nine areas."

'Among others, see Shaw and McKay, Juvenile Delinquency and Urban Areas (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1942).

'Research Department, Welfare Council of Metropolitan Chicago, Statistics, Vol. XXI (July and August, 1954).