11. The local police departments of the United States, by complaint, referral, or direct surveillance, are the major agency in defining and processing the delinquent.

a. Of all agencies officially concerned with the delinquent, the police have contact with all official delinquents and the largest number of unofficial delinquent children.

b. Two out of three cases of delinquency are handled and disposed of by police departments in the United States as "station adjustments." The nature of this disposition varies within and between police jurisdictions. There is no uniformity of treatment or common standard to which the police agencies repair.

c. The basic emphasis in police work relative to juveniles consists of the singularly negative functions of arrest and detention.

d. The police juvenile bureaus of the United States vary in their quality, numbers and organization. For the most part, the juvenile police occupy positions of secondary importance in the U. S. police system.

e. The police function is, for the most part, unrelated to or in conflict with other institutionalized services for youth.

12. Current methods of dealing with delinquency reflect popular myths and misconceptions about the problem. These myths and misconceptions must be regarded as current conditions of the problem; they are:

a. "All delinquents are alike." (They are alike only in the common name we give them: delinquent.)

b. "Severe punishment is the ultimate effective deterrent." (It is the swiftness and certainty of justice which impresses, not the severity of punishment.) c. "The delinquent has been effectively treated if he is removed from our sight." (Every youngster must one day return to the community. We take an enormous calculated risk by placing him in a correctional institution.) d. "The first offender should be merely admonished and thus given another chance." (This alone usually breeds contempt for the law. A real chance requires addressing the youngster's underlying needs, placing him in touch with persons or agencies equipped to cope with those needs.)

e. “There is a single and simple solution of the delinquency problem." (There is none. If addressed in a community context, we may be able to bring to bear those aspects of community life which relate to each child's needs.)

WHAT IS PREVENTION?

There are various ways of regarding the function of prevention. But the matter is especially complicated in the case of juvenile delinquency prevention. Most so-called constructive activities directed toward young people are urged or justified on the score that they, among other things, help prevent delinquency. For the most part, the value of such programs, whether they specifically do or do not prevent delinquency, is seldom brought into question. But it must be noted that generally and specifically, in the present state of our knowledge, the best that can be said for such claims is that they represent only a pious hope. Furthermore, ideas about preventing juvenile delinquency are usually centered upon what are euphemistically referred to as pre-delinquent acts. The fact is that official and

41638 0-59- -19

confirmed delinquency follows upon, and is a by-product of, the treatment of early behavior disorders. Hence the prevention of delinquency should be concerned with these confirming influences as well as the initial disturbing conditions. In short, the prevention of delinquency must consist of something more than romantic proposals toward the elimination or correction of every possible childhood deviation. Deviations and aberrations are a part of growing up. The crux of delinquency prevention is to address such deviations and aberrations without dramatizing youngsters as evil, and hence to cut short or even avoid their public definition and self-identification as delinquents. It is this public naming of the delinquent, and the resulting conception of himself as delinquent, which is the heart of the prevention problem. Ways and means must be developed for addressing the problem behavior of increasing numbers of young people without labeling and making them delinquent. This is more than mere rhetoric, for it is a characteristic fact about most programs of prevention that they are not equipped, or find it inconvenient, to deal with marginal youngsters within their well-regulated circles. Hence the general unattractiveness and unavailability of conventional child welfare programs to aggressive and hostile young people.

Projects for the control of delinquency reflect the various points of view of practitioners in the field. As often as not the qualifications of a practitioner to work in the field consist of no more than the desire to "do good." By and large, however, delinquency prevention programs can be classified according to four major operational themes which in turn reflect the philosophies of their more articulate advocates. These are:

(1) A generalized attack upon the totality of economic and social factors such as income, employment, housing, education, public services, neighborhood and other general conditions of social and psychic insecurity. This emphasis is disposed to regard juvenile delinquency as a function of more basic disabling conditions of the entire society. It follows that the emphasis is in the direction of more and better housing, adequate employment and income for heads of families, etc., rather than concern with the individual delinquent; while programs designed to deal with experiences relating directly to delinquency or with services to youth receive attention only in a most general and inclusive way.

(2) A specific attack upon the potential delinquents, that is, those who exhibit early behavior symptoms or who give signs of one kind or another which it is assumed distinguish these individuals as those amongst whom behavior difficulty of a serious kind may be anticipated. Such emphasis is designed to focus upon the problem child rather than expend, wastefully, effort and resources in a shot-gun approach. Implicit in this method is the separation of the potential delinquent from the processes of group life. It is assumed that programs can focus upon those in whom individually disabling conditions have occurred in the early formative years, which incapacitate the individual to meet effectively the trials and vicissitudes of a potentially hostile environment. That individuals with such histories can be numbered among the delinquents cannot be questioned. Whether all such individuals

develop similarly remains an untested assertion. Furthermore, the nature of the attention to be given such identified youngsters varies from program to program and remains also a moot question. In some instances special attention is directed toward the family constellation; other programs are "tailored" to what are regarded as the very special needs of incorrigibles or those who will not enlist in conventional programs. Many national and inclusive all-youth programs have engrafted the delinquency problem onto their approach by fostering special programs designed to give special and differentiated attention to delinquents. Such quite different movements as the Boys Scouts of America and the Y.M.C.A., by what has been referred to as "aggressive casework" have in recent years coined such phrases as "less chance areas," "service outposts," "natural groupings," and "reaching out," in order to give delinquent and potentially-delinquent children and families the help they need. Whether the "help they need" is adequately defined and whether it can give new direction and influence to the social context is also an undetermined question.

(3) Efforts designed to minimize the development and maturation of delinquency among those who have been officially declared delinquent and who it is felt can be rescued by services which will keep them out of further trouble. The Big Brother and Big Sister movement, informal supervision and casework methods are generally regarded as non-authoritarian techniques which can give assistance and guidance in order to provide the necessary influence to forestall further delinquent temptations or tendencies. These measures are regarded as alternatives to further court or official action and are disposed to regard delinquency as commanding attention only when the police and the courts first enter the picture.

(4) The organization and mobilization of the community with a view to improving the local social environment and enlisting local citizenry and/or local social agencies in a concerted program of protection and care for the neighborhood youth. This kind of emphasis dates from World War I and the origin of the Community Council movement. Its latter day counterpart is the Coordinating Council. It is assumed that the council can extend a more effective youth service through cooperation and clearing house techniques as between the otherwise separate and independent welfare, educational and recreational agencies of a community. Another contemporary development of the community organization movement is the emphasis upon local citizens and what are referred to as "natural groups" and "indigenous leaders." In such programs it is assumed that delinquent, needy and, indeed, all of the youth of a community can be directed toward conventional activity through the agency of the local citizenry. It is further assumed that the awakening of community interest, and the recognition of such leadership, is an effective means for increasing the capacity of the local citizens to deal with the problems confronting them. In this context it is assumed delinquency, along with other social difficulties, can be more effectively treated and prevented.

THE RELEVANCE OF PREVENTION PROGRAMS

TO VERIFIED KNOWLEDGE ABOUT DELINQUENCY

The aforementioned types of action are in the main a reflection of the current tendency to tackle juvenile delinquency and related social problems in what might be called doctrinaire terms.

For one reason or another, these approaches have become institutionalized, and new activity and resource is usually poured into existing channels or the operation is reproduced in a new setting. In other words it is popularly accepted that there are established and respectable ways of expressing concern and doing something about juvenile delinquency, and these are the ways. These alternative approaches are in varying degrees sensitive to one or the other factual aspects of delinquent etiology. But two things can be said about the way in which these programs relate to the nature of delinquency. First, one or the other approach is colored by the preoccupation and emphasis of one of the behavioral sciences. For example, the broad socio-economic approach is advanced by those who see separate problems, such as delinquency, as precipitates of general social currents and whose orientation is toward the overriding importance of political and economic forces. Most of those who encounter delinquency as a judicial and administrative problem are disposed to limit the area of their responsibility, and to see delinquency as a task in improving and enriching the character of service at that point. The approach to delinquency in terms of early behavioral symptoms is largely influenced by the point of view and special interests of those behavioral sciences which center upon the individual as a unit of study and treatment. Likewise, the "community organizers," whether in terms of agencies and institutions or of the local citizenry, are under the influence of group and community ideologies put forward by the discipline of sociology and social group work.

It is worthwhile to assess these ventures with a view to noting the extent to which they take into account the total range of research findings which the behavioral sciences have produced. Unfortunately, the pious hopes of those who would "do good" in the prevention of crime and delinquency are not necessarily reflected in a concern with establishing the relevance of their techniques and procedures to the objective nature of the problem. One way of examining their relevance would be to classify preventive techniques along lines which presume to engage the problem in some meaningful way that relates to the nature of juvenile delinquency. Correspondingly, it may be useful and instructive to review various approaches in terms of the following categories: (1) Programs oriented toward the delinquent as an individual, apart from the local community and the wider social process. (2) Programs oriented toward the delinquent as a member of natural and informally organized groups, primarily involved in leisure time activities. (3) Programs oriented in terms of local community processes and treating the community as a whole for addressing the youth problems which arise therein.

PREVENTION PROGRAMS

ORIENTED TOWARD INDIVIDUALS

Individual-oriented programs attempt to deal with delinquents, pre-delinquents and other children who exhibit problem behavior. These programs may also deal with parents in which case they explore tension-producing conditions or defective parental attitudes in the home. In working with individual children, such programs attempt to ameliorate conditions (mental retardation, truancy and school problems and emotional defects) thought to be conductive to delinquency. Frequently such programs treat symptoms rather than basic causes.

Individual-oriented programs may be subclassified into the following types: (1) protective care, (2) counseling or therapy, and (3) "aggressive case-finding." There is some overlapping of techniques among these types.

1. Protective Care Agencies-The protective care agencies usually work with juvenile courts and concentrate their efforts on neglected and dependent children. Little evaluation research concerning such agencies exists. One New York followup study1 indicated that out of a sample of foster home children 15.5 percent subsequently got into conflict with the law and another 22.6 percent developed into a variety of "incapables" as adults. By way of comparison, out of a control group who remained in "bad homes," without the benefit of foster-home placement, only 7 percent subsequently became delinquent. Such results may reflect the difficulties of making a follow-up study of children over whom there exists no agency control or records more than anything else. However, this evaluation study does indicate the disproportionate amount of delinquency and defective adulthood produced by a relatively small segment of the child population, viz., the minute proportion placed in foster homes. Further, together with the incidental or impressionistic evidence of other students, such as the Gluecks, Healy and Bronner, and Glick and Black, this study shows the failure of such agencies to "protect" the child from what in the agency's view is a "bad" home environment.

2. Therapy and Counseling Programs - Therapy and counseling programs vary in that their techniques may involve "permissive interaction" or intensive therapy sessions. Such programs may be a part of specific community institutions like the juvenile court, the school or the church, while others are private and profit-motivated. There exists little evaluative research, of a determinate nature, on the work of such programs.

One such program, the Cambridge-Somerville study, was organized in terms of seeking out children who needed help or social support in the community, with a view to establishing a long-term friendship relation, and thus preventing juvenile delinquency. A control group with whom no such friendship relations were established was used to evaluate the juvenile delinquency prevention effect of this program. The results were stated in vague and subjective terms in that 21 percent of the experimental group were "helped" and 16 percent were "benefited temporarily." The remaining 63 percent apparently received no "help." The types of boys who 1 Sophie Theis, How Foster Children Turn Out (New York: State Charities Aid Association, 1924).