showed favorable results were those who were initially designated as having a favorable personality type. How many of such favorable types may have been prevented from becoming delinquent is a moot question, especially in view of the fact that some of those who were subsequently designated as delinquent were also "helped" by the program. The relations between "need,” “help” and “delinquency prevention" are so nebulous, it is difficult to know what was intended or resulted. The Cambridge-Somerville program, when evaluated in terms of official delinquency records, revealed no relation whatsoever to juvenile delinquency prevention. There was no difference between the experimental (“helped”) and control group: 30 percent of each group were referred to the juvenile court, and roughly 10 percent of each group became "chronic offenders." Such results do not indicate that no boys were "helped" in a general sense, but what is indicated is that the "help" was not significant in terms of preventing juvenile delinquency. One example of the intensive psychiatric therapy type of program that has received an impressionistic species of evaluation is the Judge Baker Guidance Center attached to the juvenile court in Boston. Originally this agency confined itself to study, diagnosis and recommendation for treatment by the court's social service agency. When this service was reviewed by the Gluecks, it was found that the work of the center had no relation to outcome behavior. The children studied, diagnosed and referred were no different from a control group who had not received this type of attention: the two groups had very similar records of recidivism. Upon learning these results the center was reorganizd and now concentrated its efforts on intensive child-parent therapy sessions, since the quality of family life had been found to be a significant factor in the formation of delinquent careers. When this new emphasis was evaluated, it was found that 93 percent of the nondelinquent, but emotionally disturbed children, "benefited from" the intensive therapy. By comparison only 75 percent of the pre-delinquent and only 66 percent of the delinquent children "benefited from" the therapy. "Benefited from" appears to have been equated with non-recidivism and the prevention of imputed, incipient delinquency. Such "results" are not difficult to understand when we are informed that the center will service only those children whose parents make explicit their desire and motivation to take part in the intensive therapy offered. Such cooperativeness is usually absent in the parents of delinquents and pre-delinquents, so these groups of children were disproportionately eliminated from receiving the therapy. It is therefore difficult to tell whether the results relate to the criterion for selection or the nature of the children who were exposed to therapy. 3. Aggressive Case-finding Programs Aggressive case-finding programs provide therapeutic techniques only incidentally in relation to their main function, which is to seek out the youngster in danger of trouble, or actually in trouble already, and to try to work out alternatives to police and court action. Programs of this type have been experimented with in Passaic, New Jersey, and in New York City. Earlier, in 1937, a similar program, under the auspices of the Children's Bureau, was organized in St. Paul, and lasted for about six years. Each of these programs emphasized reaching out for the "unreachables," but in practice referrals from the courts, the police and the schools were also accepted. These programs gathered and coordinated information about the children they reached and then referred them to agencies with appropriate resources in the community. The latter agencies were the ones that applied the therapeutic or social service techniques, if any. None of these programs was subjected to controlled evaluation, either as to the efficacy of aggressive case-finding itself, or as to the various techniques and services brought to bear on the "unreachables" by the cooperating agencies. The St. Paul program, however, made an assessment of a selected number of its registered clients who were extended some form of individualized treatment. This sample came to approximately 50 percent of their total case load, but the basis of their selection was not made explicit. In any event, out of the total sample of 727 cases whe received individualized treatment, 18 percent were said to have experienced "major improvement," 65 percent experienced "partial improvement" and 17 percent experienced "no improvement." These figures approximate the experience of the Judge Baker Center which also excluded a large number of youngsters from the sample which served as a basis for evaluating the work of the program. If this evaluation has any significance at all, it would appear to indicate that “aggressive" case work and passive (receiving referrals) case work can not be differentiated in terms of the success or failure rates of the persons "reached." In general, the success of aggressive case-finding programs must be specified in terms of the number of "unreachables" that are reached and serviced successfully. Since most "unreachables" reside in areas of high population density, and in view of the fact that over a six-year period the St. Paul program located only 1,466 cases (an unspecified number of which were actually referrals), it is problematic that any significance can be attached to an evaluation of half the cases selected on an unknown basis. The entire notion of "individualized" treatment assumes that the delinquencyproducing agent resides in the child, apart from the social and community context which has been imported into the child's behavior. It assumes that the child can somehow be "adjusted" apart from the family and community context, and that the child may then be reintegrated with that context and maintain the “adjustment” intact. That such is not the case has been realized even by some of the more perceptive psychiatrists who now maintain that a large proportion of legal offenders are "normal delinquents," i.e., adjusted to a delinquent community context rather than an artificial and sporadic therapy situation.1 GROUP ORIENTED PROGRAMS 1. Group Work Agencies- The fact that a large proportion of delinquents carry on their delinquent behavior in and through "gang" or group membership has already been noted. Cognizant of this fact, social work has, in the last twenty years, 1L. Bovet, Psychiatric Aspects of Juvenile Delinquency (Geneva: W.H.O., 1951), p. 20. developed the "group work" approach to the problem of juvenile delinquency. The underlying principle is to extend casework methods beyond the individual and his family to groups of approximately the same age as the delinquent, or predelinquent, being treated. One type of treatment utilized by group work agencies is to induce the individual to become a member of a youth group engaged in recreational activity of a certain kind, such as a baseball team, camera club, hiking club, etc. The youngster is then given special attention to help him adjust to this group, thereby attempting to counteract attitudes and tendencies he possesses that are conducive to delinquent behavior. The effectiveness of these programs in the prevention of delinquency, on the basis of available information, is, to say the least, difficult to evaluate. A statistical study revealed that group work agencies using this approach tend to serve only a selected group of children, viz., those who come from more stable and economically fortunate families and neighborhoods. The author of this study concluded that "group work agencies are not in general identified closely with the underprivileged and insecure elements in the population, or with age groups among which delinquency is most prevalent."1 Group work agencies using this type of approach cannot be assessed with regard to their preventive effects on juvenile delinquency since there is no basis for judging whether or not they are even addressing the problem of delinquency. They may, on the contrary, be handling children who are not very likely to become delinquent. A second type of group work approach to the treatment of delinquency is aimed directly at modifying the behavior of the delinquent group as a whole, by redirecting its activities into conventional channels. Based upon the knowledge of gang life derived from sociological and psychological studies of the growth, structure, and value content of the gang as a social group, programs have been devised by group work agencies to redirect the gangs themselves into conventional ways of behaving instead of treating gang members individually and separated from their associates. The essential characteristics of this approach consist of locating the gang in its native habitat and having some trained person enter into friendly participation with its members, winning their acceptance, and thereby seeking to influence the delinquent group's activities along more socially acceptable lines. Once again, a clear evaluation of the effectiveness of this work and under what circumstances it succeeds or fails remains undetermined. All that the existing studies reveal in this regard is contained in very general and guarded statements in the reports of several projects utilizing this approach. Too often such statements reflect the idealistic hopes of the reporter rather than what the objective findings of the studies warrant. 1E. F. Reed, "How Effective are Group Work Agencies in Preventing Delinquency?" Focus, XXVIII (Nov., 1949), pp. 170-176. In a project conducted in central Harlem, trained persons worked wm: street gangs. They reported the success of their program sutem a beling and fighting decreased among the gangs," and "less tray was erdem ande them." In another project, conducted by the New York City Your Board approach was reported to result in "the prevention or mediation of mergang flict, the adoption of democratic leadership procedures and broadened meress gangs in a wide variety of constructive and conventional you are - Fran in the Los Angeles Youth Project, it was reported that the number of an "dropped steadily" among the gangs they worked 2. Recreational Programs-The stress on the need for more adde tional facilities in economically deprived communities hat long tears a popular recommendation to reduce delinquency. In itself. this constones at negative emphasis, for it assumes that simply because younger men ventional leisure time recreational activities, they will not at the same time seuIME involved in delinquent behavior. In fact, studies have shown that some der Lett participate in supervised recreational and club activities, while others avoid them And the same has been shown to be true of non-deling ents Numerous surveys have been conducted to illustrate the fact that dean SETELA rates are high in neighborhoods lacking recreational facilities or ime e active exists to indicate that the introduction of a recreational program in suct area: necessarily results in the prevention or reduction of dennquency In one study four slum areas and one middle class are Cheig 1. More non-delinquents used the facines than deherrs 2. In the slum areas, delinquents more nearly eludes won VECAM recreational participation. In the middle class ens ha lugar yesprin of non-delinquents and the lowest proportion of genoem You canĄ in the recreational programs. According to this, it appears that in neighborhood that sevdah wiREJA, ically, recreational programs reach a smaller proportion of sex am the tag do in slum areas. The study further concluded that delinquent boys who, bh yine yen a recreational programs spent more time in them than 64 1 Paul L. Crawford, Daniel I. Malamud and James R. Dunge Gangs" (New York: Welfare Council of New York City, 1955, 2 J. E. McCarthy and Joseph S. Barbaro, "Redirecting Teen Age Guc reached, Sylvan S. Furman, Editor (New York: New York City for 123. However, the delinquents spent less time in closely supervised activities than did non-delinquents.1 In another study, a careful and intensive analysis of the effect of a boys' club on delinquency was made in New York City. The findings indicated that boys who were members of the club had a larger number of delinquencies than boys of the same neighborhood who were not members. Furthermore, there appeared to be positive correlation between the length of time a boy actively belonged to the club and the probability of his becoming involved in delinquent acts. "Of the total official offenses of Boys' Club members, only 18 percent occurred before the boys joined the Club. 28 percent took place after some participation in Club activities, and 61 percent during a period in which the boys were actively affiliated with the Club." Though it may seem from the above that club activity fosters delinquency. the conclusion is not necessarily warranted. A more probable explanation lies in the fact that as the boys matured, they entered those age groups in which delinquency appears more frequently, that is, as a function of age. Despite the evidence, the author of this study remains optimistic with regard to the value of the service Boys' Clubs render in curbing juvenile delinquency: "Nevertheless, in the development of comprehensive crime prevention plans for any community which is characterized by delinquency areas, it becomes obvious that we shall need many more boys' clubs in order to perform the function of crime prevention adequately.” COMMUNITY ORIENTED PROGRAMS 1. Coordinated Community Programs-Based on the assumption that high rates of delinquency are correlates of socially disorganized and economically deteriorated neighborhoods, the "community organization" approach is dedicated to the principle that citizens who live in such neighborhoods must reorganize themselves into a self-conscious, cohesive social unit in order to solve their own delinquency problem. Several projects along this line have been developed in the United States with varying degrees of reported success. Probably the most well known among these is the Chicago Area Project. These "self help" enterprises have now been developed in more than ten neighborhoods of Chicago by the Area Project. In summary outline, the program includes: a. Emphasis on the recruitment of "natural leaders" of a neighborhood to organize and direct committees to carry on various program activities for the community. b. The establishment of a recreational center in each community to provide 1E. Shanas and C. Dunning, Recreation and Delinquency (Chicago: Chicago Recreation Commission, 1942). 'F. M. Thrasher, "The Boys' Club and Juvenile Delinquency," Amer. Jour. Soc., XLII (July, 1936), pp. 66-80. 'Ibid, p. 75. Ibid, p. 80. |