REVIEWS
| Published date | 01 March 1961 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2230.1961.tb02177.x |
| Date | 01 March 1961 |
REVIEWS
THE
PROBLEM
OF
DELINQUENCY. Edited
by
SHELDON
GLUECK
[Boston (Mass.)
:
Houghton Mifflin
Company;
Oxford
:
at t!ie
University Press.
1959.
xvi and
1188
pp.
(with index).
23
net.]
Tills
very substantial volume falls into the category of the American publi-
cations known
as
“case books,” that is to say it contains material designetl
for study by law students, and indeed particularly by Professor
Glueck‘s
(rum advanced Seminar at Harvard on the Problem of Delinquency. M’ith its
large two-column pages it certainly provides them with
a
foriiiida1)le task,
and
gives to the general reader who has the leisure and interest to embark
upon
a
serious study of the subject
a
most valuable and detailed cons1)ectus.
Most of the material, especially
Part
11,
which
is
concerned with the juvcnilv
court in the U.S.A. (largely court decisions) is strictly Anierican in its factual,
and indeed its psychological, approach, and to that extent the English reader
niay feel
a
little
at
sea. On the other hand the problems of mcthodology and
causation which are handled in Part
I,
trcatmrnt
(Part
111)
and prevention
(Part
IV)
are broadly similar in modern communities,
so
that with
a
littlc
adJiistnicnt the English reader should be able
to
extract much meat from the
book, which considering its contents is cheap
at
three pounds.
It should be made clear in the first place that in the U.S.A. the tern,
dolinquency means juvenile delinquency
:
in this country it has been generally
used with
a
wider meaning to cover criminality
as
a whole,
a
usage which has
led
to some confusion, and has no doubt been
a
factor in the recent change
in the name of the leading British periodical on the subject from
Bri.tish
Journd
of
Delinquency
to
British
JournnL
of
Criminology.
Apart from the legal decisions in the Juvenile Court section the material
is
confined almost entirely to extracts from learned journals and addresses
delivered at conferences. Indeed Professor Glueck states in his preface that
extracts from books have been limited to the works
of
the Gluecks themselves.
This is not quite true, because one of the ve?y rare English sections is froiii
Goring’s
English Convict.
This means that the English reader has
placed
readily at his disposal
a
mass
of
material which he probably could not obtain
without visiting an American library.
The essential point
is
:
How well has the selection been made? On thc
whole
I
think one can say
it
is satisfactory, as indeed one would expect from an
editor
of
Professor Glueck’s authority and reputation. Sonic qualifications
niust be made however. The first is that he has drawn too little on non-
American sources. In spite of the fact that he emphasises in his Introduction
that
he has drawn on foreign sources
I
have only been able to find one modern
English extract-that of Messrs. Spencer and Grygier on the Probation Hostel
-and, apart from
a
page
or
two from Lombroso, the writings of other
European criminologists seem to be equally neglected. It
is
true that here
and there in the footnotes there are references to the work of Sir Cyril Burt,
to
the
British
Jwrnal
of
Delinquency
and other authorities, but the reader of
this volume who had no other sources of information would inevitably draw
the conclusion that little work on the subject with which
it
deals had been
done in Europe, particularly of recent years.
The
truth is of course just the
opposite
:
there are flourishing sehools
of
criminology in several British
universities and the work
of
the Institute for the Study and Treatment of
Delinquency with its
Brbtish
Jouriucl
of
Delinquency
is well known abroad.
291
292
THE
MODERN
LAW
REVIEW
VOL.
24
It is true that there
has
not been quite the same concentration on juvenile
crinic in Europe
as
has been evident in the U.S.A.1 but much of value has
uppenred. Indccd one might widen the arca of criticism, because these
problcins arc under helpful study in other parts not only of the British
Co~nrnon~r~caltli, but
of
the world in general. American lawyers are usually
so
sensitive to the decisions of British courts, and
so
generous in their use of
thern,
tlint
the omissions in this book strike one the more forcibly. The
truth prol)iibly is that with a few exceptions, such as Charles Goring hiniself,
the I3ritish contribution to the scientific study of delinquency problems has
until the present gencration been
so
slight that the Americans who have been
far
nhe:id
of
us
both in penal experiments and on the theoretical side have no
c!oul)t got out
of
the habit of looking to this country as
a
source of inspiration.
13ut this failure in criminological study did not occur all over Europe
:
indeed
\iilual)!e work
has
been done, particularly in Holland and Scandinavia and in
prc-IIitler Gennany,
so
that the same excuse would not be valid in respect
of
the lack of European material generally.
I
think too that there is sonic unevenness in the balance of the selection.
There have of course been very niarked divergencies of opinion among the
different schools of American criminologists and some of the exchanges have
been heated and evcn bitter. This
has
been particularly evident
as
between
sociologists and psychologists. Professor Glueck who
is
exceptional among
lrnding criminologists in being
a
lawyer should better than anyone be able to
hold
the balance, and up to
a
point he does
so.
Indeed in his Preface he
stresses the importance of including
“
all relevant points of view.”
On the whole however Professor Glueck has been on the side of the
psychologists
as
against the sociological school
:
it
is perhaps significant that
nniong others the present volume is dedicated to
Dr.
William Healy and
Dr.
Augusta Brunner. In several of his introductory notes to chapters in
this volume he criticises the sociological school of criminologists unmercifully.
He has accepted the view that the disorientation which shows up in criminal
courts in the delinquent’s later years usually, if not invariably, has its origin
in his early life.
His
famous study
“
Unraveling Juvenile Delinquency
”
with
its
“
prediction
’’
technique is founded upon his belief in these theories, and
has
been sharply attacked in consequence.
Personally
as
far
as
my own slight experience goes
I
believe Professor
Glueck
to
be right, but
I
feel that the present volume is perhaps somewhat
overweighted with contributions by his own followers, and that the work of some
outstanding American criminologists is hardly included at all. Having
said
this
I
would emphasise that it is more
a
matter
of
balance than of exclusion,
and that Professor Glueck’s claim that he has included something to give an
idea of all the significant points of view
is
made out.
I
have said that this volume is concerned with Juvenile Delinquency.
Part
I
which deals with methodology and
also
with causation is however of
wider import, and relevant to the study of criminology
as
a
whole. The
exceptional difficulties which beset the scientific study of the subject particu-
larly on the statistical side are well brought out
:
these matters have of course
attracted
a
great deal of attention in England of recent years. As
to
causa-
tion Professor Glueck is
a
leading proponent of the multiple causation theory,
and the extracts given strongly support his views which have met with
a
large measure of acceptance in England of late years. Some of the Contributions
given here date somewhat
:
thus there is in
some
of them
a
preoccupation with
unemployment which subsequent events have shown
to
be unjustified: it.
would have been wise at the least to have footnoted these sections in the light
of later experience.
While
Part
I
takes
up
some
260
pages of text,
Part
I1
on
the Juvenile
1
In
a
footnote
at
p.
79
a recent American bibliography
of
no
less
than
972
articles
dealing
with
juvenile delinquency
is
referred
to
I
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