What makes a juvenile delinquent?

Title

Creator

Oursler, Fulton

Language

English

Year

1968

Subject

Harvard Law School.

Glueck, Sheldon

Glueck, Eleanor Touroff

Juvenile delinquents.

Rights

In Copyright - Educational Use Permitted

Abstract

Preview of a book that tells how to spot the young criminal before he gets started.

Fulltext

■ Preview of a book that tells how to spot the young criminal before he gets started. WHAT MAKES A JUVENILE DELINQUENT? If potential lawbreakers could be spotted on their first day in school — before they have ever thrown stones at train windows, set fire to houses, slugged, stolen or murdered — we could save lives, careers, untold heart aches and literally billions of dollars every year. This old dream of psycho logists and churchmen comes much nearer to reality-in a re port just , issued on to scien tific study of the problem by Sheldon Glueck, professor of crirninal law and criminology, and his wife, Dr. Eleanor Touroff Glueck, research as sociate, of the Harvard Law School. Their survey throws a hopeful light on the riddle of hostile character and in corrigible behavior. In a New York tenement two brothers were born a year or so apart. They play ed in the same alleys, were neglected by the same mo ther, abused by the same father. One became a gang ster and a killer. The other became a detective whose grim job it was to bring his own brother to justice. What made the brothers different? The overwhelming majority of boys born in wrong streets and reared in wrong families turn out all right. What is the basic difference between the majority who turn out good and the few who, turn out bad? It was the purpose of the Gluecks’ inquiry to find all the factors which are common to child offenders. The Gluecks began their ten-year exploration by care fully selecting 1000 young sters. Five hundred were normal boys doing well in home and school. The othei 500 had all been in police trouble — most of them sen tenced to reformatories after Panorama judges, doctors, social agen cies and church workers had tried in vain to help them. The investigators decided to match, as nearly as possible, bad boys with good boys of equal age, background, intel ligence and disposition. But twos and twos of 1000 lads were laboriously paired. The troublemaker from a family paying $26 a month rent must have his opposite number from a similar low-rent fami ly; Greeks to match Greeks; a stepson for a stepson. The boys were weighed, measured and photographed. A med ical examination was follow ed by tests of intelligence and achievement, a study of traits and a psychiatric inter view. Family backgrounds and personal histories were explored. Out of a maze of facts and statistics there emerges an astounding creature a compo site juvenile delinquent. Not in body, mind or spirit is he what you might expect would make for dynamic manhood if drawn into dif ferent channels! Far from being the under privileged runt of sentimental legend,- the delinquent is likely to have the form of an athlete. There is nothing un dernourished about him; in height and weight he is supe rior to most of the good boys. He is more masculine, a fel low of bone and muscle, with broad shoulders and chest, tapering torso and narrow hips. This portrait of an ath letic, masculine delinquent does not, in the words of the authors, “in any sense repre sent merely random vari ations. It is a meaningful anatomical pattern.” More surprises appear in the health examination. The delinquent is not at all the product of bodily disease or weakness. There is “little if any difference in the general health of the two groups.” Except for one thing, the handgrip of the delinquent is stronger, reflecting greater vitality. “There is” the re port recalls, “a popular no tion that juvenile delinquents are on the whole a less healthy group of youngsters. The facts by no means bear out this belief.” Another surprise, “There is a significant difference in the proportion of delinquents and March 1968 5 non-delinquents evidencing neurological handicaps of one sore or another.” What difference? More good boys have neurological or psychoneurotic troubles than do bad boys! How intelligent is this men tally and physically healthy delinquent? The survey de monstrated that low mentality is not a characteristic of ju venile delinquency. While in certain tests the delinquent is a little inferior, he is in other somewhat superior. Out of thousands of tests in “handmindedness.” for example, he emerges to convince the •Gluecks that delinquents “evidently have a little more sort of creative ability.” But it is in temperamental make-up that more positive factors of delinquency ap pear. Our feelings have more to do with shaping character and behavior than our brains have. These deep er aspects are explored by use of the Rorschack test, which psychologists regard as a powerful instrument in diagnosis. With ten ink blots on cards, examiners draw from a child the darkest secrets of his mind. What does the shapeless blotch make him think of? Telling what thoughts it evokes in him, the boy begins to reveal himself. The inquirers learn that from earliest childhood the delinquent has found it hard to “think and act in the ways of the community,” which means that he lacks what we call common sense. He seems constitutionally unable to fol low a methodical approach to any problem; his “social as sertion” gets in the way. This “social assertion” is his deter mination to assert not his rights or his opinions but his will. He wants what he wants when he wants it, never mind what anybody else says or thinks. To his nature all submissiveness is odious. As if by instinct, he refuses to respect any rules. Here is a major symptom. In this dan gerous difference lies the boy’s defiance of decent and natural restraints. Far from having feelings of insecurity or anxiety, the boy suffers from neither frustra tion nor inferiority. He does not worry about losing his job, his home or his liberty. He is loftily sure he is smart enough to take care of him self. He is a superior being 6 Panorama who is not appreciated. With grandiose notions about his destiny, he has no normal fear of failure or defeat. In curable optimist, when the law catches up with him he is always sure that the next time he will “get away with it.” He is the most self-re liant of lads; the good boy, whom he scorns, is more of ten the one who looks to others for help and encour agement. The delinquent feels no need to live up to the expectations of others; basically he does not wish to cooperate. But he is forever making blunders. He acts on impulse, with little self-control. One can never tell what he will do next. Yet in all his head strong ways he .shows a cer tain charming vivacity, a liveliness ‘ of manner which makes him outshine many a solid and dependable young citizen. Psychologists call him extrovert, because he is likely to get rid of his ten sions through emotional tant rums or rugged action. He doesn’t brood; he explodes. Perhaps his most signifi cant trait is identified in the psychiatric tests when some of his hopes and dreams be gin to appear. Far more than most boys do the incorrigible lad yearns for adventure. All youngsters have such day dreams, but the delinquent believes in them; with him the need for danger is a compul sion, an unsatisfied thirst. In olden times boys could run away to sea and struggle with man and nature. Or they could join a train of co vered wagons and, standing with their elders, shoot it out with redskins and bandits. Finding excitement, they ul timately matured, if they sur vived, and finished their lives as more or less ordinary citi zens. Not so today. Too often boys think that excite ment can come only in vio lating the law. “This definite preference of the delinquents for adventu rous activities, for exciting forms of recreation,” the re port declares, “is one of the more striking findings of this study.” To satisfy the craving, a boy will steal rides, hop trucks, keep late hours roam ing the streets; he exults in destructive mischief, begins to drink in his early teens. His haunts are those of his gang — waterfront, railroad March 1968 7 yards, poolrooms, cheap dance halls and amusement parks. One half of all the 500 delinquents were active members of gangs, organized for a definite antisocial pur pose and having vigorous leadership. The survey shatters the il lusion that the delinquent is led into crime by bad com panions. From earliest child hood he shows a preference for other boys as unmanage able as himself. He avoids good boys because he despises them. In a study of the delin quent’s home and family, other immediate signs and tokens appear. Most of the good boys live with father and mother; delinquents come from broken homes — parents separated, divorced, or parted 'by imprisonment or death. The delinquent’s fami ly is more likely to be de pendent on relief agencies and doles. His home is not as clean, has fewer sanitary facilities. There is crowding and no privacy. “The underthe-roof situation,” the report states, “is significantly worse among the delinquents.” So we see that even when matching boys are drawn from the same slums there are differences in family selfrespect and integrity which count heavily. When one boy is good and another bad in the same family, however, the differences narrow down to individual temperament, and these sytnptoms need to be discovered at the earliest moment. There is a certain cohesion in the families of good boys, a “we” feeling of strong emo tional ties. Here we come close to the heart of the whole matter. The most significant factor in any boy’s life is his relationship with his parents and especially with his father. When it is disturbed — as it is so often in sordid sur roundings — the child is in danger. If the father shows hostility or contempt, some thing is dammed up in the son. He has a deep, passion ate need for “emotional iden tification” with his father; he needs an ideal image, a pater nal, older, wiser friend. That deep human hunger for emu lation will be turned else where — and perhaps the disappointed boy begins to worship the strongest, boldest, toughest ne’er-do-well in the district. 8 Panorama The survey shows that the delinquent has long been at odds with his father, while most of the good boys on the block remain close to their fathers. Moreover, the incorrigible has suffered from erratic and conflicting discipline, which has encouraged him to defy all authority. He has taken many beatings for his sins and learned nothing from them except how to endure pain, which may be of grisly use to him in a criminal career. But not all of the character istics which Glueck investi gators revealed would appear in the young child; many de velop only with the years. Would enough storm signals show up in a six-year-old to make a forecast .possible? This question was answered by setting up a series of “pre dictive tables” listing out standing signs of delinquency which manifest themselves at an early age. Was the boy markedly adventurous? Extroverted? Stubborn? Emotionally asser tive? Did he exhibit the ag gressive infliction of his will on others? Was he defiant? Suspicious? Destructive? It was also important to know whether the discipline of the father was lax, overstrict, erratic — or firm and kindly. In cases where disci pline by the father was lax, 59.8 percent were in the de linquent group; of those who fatherly discipline was firm and kindly, only 9.3 percent were delinquent. The same questions must be asked about the mother. Was the family held together by ties of sym pathy and warmth of feeling? These are major factors from which a character diag nosis can be made. No child could be expected to show all the symptoms. Any child might have several of them and still not be a potential delinquent. But it is beyond argument a danger signal when most of such factors appear in a six-year-old. Social scientists work in the realm of probabilities, and there are reliable laws in pro babilities. By applying them to young children, its is as serted that from 65 to 70 per cent of the delinquents can be isolated at six years of age, when there is still a chance to help them. — By Fulton Oursler. March 1968

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