The American Journal of Sociology

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: A CASE STUDY OF DELINQUENT BOYS IN THE JUVENILE COURT OF CHICAGO MABEL CARTER RHOADES The University of Chicago I. POINT OF VIEW AND MATERIAL This statistical investigation of one hundred cases of delinquent boys has been undertaken in the spirit of a one-time professional worker among such boys and their...
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Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: A CASE STUDY OF DELINQUENT BOYS IN THE JUVENILE COURT OF CHICAGO MABEL CARTER RHOADES The University of Chicago I. POINT OF VIEW AND MATERIAL This statistical investigation of one hundred cases of delinquent boys has been undertaken in the spirit of a one-time professional worker among such boys and their families, as well as that of a student of sociology and criminology. It will constantly call up investigative methods, information, and point of view acquired during a year's employment in Syracuse, N. Y., by a society practically combining the work of charity organization with that of juvenile court probation officers. From a more academic standpoint, it will also be in line with a later study of juvenile offenders whose police records in the same city were of six to ten years' standing?the object being to ascertain present condition and status of ninety such boys; the method, detailed inquiry into the individual cases, involving a large amount of visitation. In the present study the object proposed was the investigation of family conditions, in each case, as causally affecting the conduct of the child. In connection with the location of the family home this naturally ramifies into consideration of practically the boy's whole environment. The writer fully realized that only comparatively superficial facts could be brought out in the time and with the opportunities at command; but experience had also taught the heart-breaking obviousness of causes of juvenile delinquency in very many cases, and inspired the hope that it might prove well worth while to set forth in tabulated form some of these same obvious causes. We all know that loss of parent, lack of home comforts and necessaries, proximity of boy gangs or resorts of vice, etc., have a demoralizing effect on th...