Lindesmith, Alfred R.

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Origins of Crime:  A New Evaluation of the Cambridge Somerville Youth Study, by William McCord, Joan McCord, and Irving Kenneth Zola

Indiana University Bloomington Maurer School of Law

Indiana Law JournalVolume 35 | Issue 3 Article 9Spring 1960Origins of Crime: A New Evaluation of theCambridge Somerville Youth Study, by WilliamMcCord, Joan McCord, and Irving Kenneth ZolaAlfred R. LindesmithIndiana UniversityFollow this and additional works at: http://www.repository.law.indiana.edu/iljPart of the Criminal Law Commons, and the Criminology and Criminal Justice CommonsThis Book Review is brought to you for free and open access by the LawSchool Journals at Digital Repository @ Maurer Law. It has been acceptedfor inclusion in Indiana Law Journal by an authorized administrator ofDigital Repository @ Maurer Law. For more information, please contactwattn@indiana.edu.Recommended CitationLindesmith, Alfred R. (1960) "Origins of Crime: A New Evaluation of the Cambridge Somerville Youth Study, by William McCord,Joan McCord, and Irving Kenneth Zola," Indiana Law Journal: Vol. 35: Iss. 3, Article 9.Available at: http://www.repository.law.indiana.edu/ilj/vol35/iss3/9BOOK REVIEWSORIGINS OF CRIME: A NEw EVALUATION OF THE CAMBRIDGE-SOMERVILLE YOUTH STUDY. By William McCord and Joan McCordwith Irving Kenneth Zola. New York: Columbia University Press.1959. Pp. xvi, 219. $6.00.The original Cambridge-Somerville study was made between 1937and 1945 and was designed to assess the effects of treatment upon agroup of 325 boys between the ages of five and thirteen at the beginningof the study who were compared with a carefully matched group of an-other 325 boys of similar age and background who received no treat-ment. The results of this study were mainly negative, i.e., approximatelyforty percent of both groups acquired official records as delinquents orcriminals and the treatment appeared to have had a negligible effect. Thepresent study, begun in 1955, was first planned as a recheck of the ef-fectiveness of treatment, but later became, as the title indicates, a studyof the causes of crime.In an early chapter the authors in the main reaffirm the originalnegative conclusions indicated in the above paragraph. They did findsome evidence, however, that intensive therapy produced positive effectsin a few of the cases.The main focus of the McCord study is upon data concerning 253of the original group of 325 boys who received treatment. The entire325 were not included because some of them had been under treatmentfor too brief a period and a few had died. Extensive information andvoluminous case records were available to the authors concerning these253 boys because they had been under observation and guidance for fromtwo to eight years in connection with the treatment program. This ma-terial was evaluated by panels of judges who rated the home environ-ment, the personalities of the parents, the nature of the discipline in thefamily, the quality of the neighborhood, the boy's role in the family andother similar matters. These factors were then correlated with the crimi-nality of the son, the type of crime committed, reformation, age at firstand last conviction, and so on.The official court record of a conviction for a violation of the crimi-nal law is the only measure of criminality utilized in this study andcriminality is taken to include traffic violations and convictions fordrunkenness. The authors admit that the acceptance of court records asINDIANA LAW JOURNALa measure of criminality is a deficiency of the study but its importanceis minimized by the arguments that there is probably little undetectedcrime and that "it is doubtful that a confirmed criminal can pass throughthe first thirty years of his life without being apprehended at least once."(p. 10) Persons who are familiar with police practices and crime sta-tistics are likely to feel that the McCords are unduly optimistic in theseassumptions. The pertinence of the quoted remark concerning "con-firmed criminals" seems doubtful since we are not told what that expres-sion means nor is there any indication how many of the boys turned into"confirmed criminals." It is interesting to ask how many convictionsare required and for what offenses to justify the use of this term? Itwill be noted that from the authors' logic and definitions "reformation"means only the absence of an official record of a conviction!On the basis of literally hundreds of correlations and combinationsof variables the authors conclude that criminals are characterized by "abasic deficiency in conscience, a failure to internalize elementary inhibi-tions" (p. 196), and that this defective conscience originates in earlypathological influences within the home consisting primarily of lack ofaffection and inconsistency. The mode of affectional relationships be-tween the son and the parents, and especially the mother, is regarded bythe authors as the basic determinant of conscience. The content of con-science is determined, they say, by the parental model and by the con-sistency with which a social value is presented to the child (pp. 198-99).While this theory is presented as a conclusion it is probably substan-tially what the authors believed before they undertook this investigation.The data presented do not compel one to accept this theory that con-science is formed in early childhood exclusively within the home, and byimplication, that it is not appreciably influenced by later adult experi-ences. Indeed, the authors themselves confess that, as regards reforma-tion, adult experiences have to be taken into consideration (p. 192).In general, the authors' theory is a mildly Freudian one in the sensethat it seeks the roots of adult behavior in childhood experiences withinthe family. This bias is made evident at many points, as for example,when it is pointed out that forty-five percent of the boys who had cruelmothers became criminals and the authors add the following unsupportedassertion: "The fact that this percentage was not higher indicates thatdespite physical abuse and overt rejection, this cruel attention instilled atleast a fear of retaliation by the law." (p. 100) Another example is thesuggestion (p. 152) that the traffic criminal is seeking an escape froman overprotective mother or compensation for a passive mother, and thathe obtains a sense of self-importance and mastery by violating traffic400BOOK REVIEWSregulations which he cannot get in his home. If one turns to table 71(p. 147), on which this conclusion is based, it is noteworthy that thesons of normal loving mothers seem to violate traffic laws about as muchas those of the overprotective and passive ones-a point not commentedupon.It is impossible in the short space of a review to do justice to themany specific findings and hypotheses advanced by the authors. As asingle example of their method and their data one table will be sum-marized. This table (p. 108) relates parental affection to the latercriminality of the son and has a bearing on the relative importance ofthe respective parent's influence. The results were:loving mother & loving father-327% of sons convicted of crimeloving mother & rejecting father-367 of sons convictedrejecting mother and loving father-46% of sons convictedrejecting mother & rejecting father-70% of sons convicted.It should be noted that, while a significant statistical relationship is in-dicated by these results, there were also many exceptions, for under themost favorable circumstances one of about every three boys neverthelessbecame criminal while under the most unfavorable circumstances aboutone in three still refrained from criminality. These results are typical ex-amples of the numerical data on which the conclusions of this study rest.The problem created by this sort of data is well brought out by theauthors themselves When they criticize the sociological approach. It can-not explain, they complain, why some boys even in the most delinquent,gang-infested areas do not join the gang and do not become delinquentor criminal. By the same taken the McCords' own theories must be re-jected, for in all instances where the number of cases was substantialthere were substantial numbers of boys who appeared as exceptions, i.e.,who became criminal despite cohesive homes, consistent discipline, lovingparents, relatively good neighborhood, and so on. Conversely, there werealso always some who did not become criminal when the opposite or un-favorable conditions prevailed. Under these circumstances it is hard tosee why the McCords view their theory as superior to any other.The McCords happen to have had at hand an abundance of data con-cerning the home backgrounds of their cases. Concerning other aspectsof the boy's early life there was apparently very little information. Forexample, detailed information concerning the boy's associations with per-sons outside the home and of his contacts with the police, courts, socialagencies, and so on was either not available or was not used. After theboy left the project there was apparently next to no real informationINDIANA LAW JOURNALabout him except as provided by court criminal records. Had all rele-vant information on all these matters been available for each boy for theentire time period from the boy's first contact with the project until 1955,a great mass of additional, inconclusive correlations could have beenpresented to confuse the issue further.It is axiomatic among statisticians that statistical correlations, re-gardless of their number or ingenuity, do not justify causal conclusions.There is no limit in principle to the number of items with which a givenform of behavior may be correlated. Criminality has been correlatedwith hundreds. The fact that a given item is statistically associated withcriminality does not prevent it from also being associated significantlywith many other forms of behavior. It is this lack of specificity of a sta-tistical relationship which is one of the important differences betweenthis sort of a relationship and a causal one.As another reason for rejecting the sociological theory of crimecausation the authors argue that the family influence is more basic thanthat of the gang (for example) because it is an earlier one. This prefer-ence for remote causes as opposed to immediate ones is not in harmonywith the usual scientific concept of cause which emphasizes immediatecausation, requiring that there be close juxtaposition of cause and effectand denying action at a distance. The McCord conception is historicalrather than scientific. It obscures an important sociological assumptionwhich the McCords make, namely, that the existence of a criminal sub-culture and gangs may be taken for granted within the environment.This assumption happens to be true of this sample drawn as it was fromthe lowest social classes within the environs of a large city, but it mightnot be true in rural areas or in the upper classes.The authors' acceptance of court records of convictions as the meas-ure of criminality creates an artificial gap between cause and effect, be-tween home environment and later criminality. This separation enablesthe authors to contend that their evaluations of the homes and parentalpersonalities could not possibly have been influenced by the criminality.It also suggests that the criminality could not possibly have been a con-tributory cause of home environment or parental attitude. It should benoted that many of the boys were originally referred to the project bysocial agencies or the police because they were thought to be maladjusted.This suggests very strongly that some were delinquent when first con-tacted. Formal conviction for crime usually follows after a preliminaryperiod of some duration characterized by association with delinquents andrepeated encounters with authorities, who are notoriously reluctant tocharge immature boys with crime. Not only is it possible, therefore, thatBOOK REVIEWSthe delinquency of the boy may have been known from the beginning,but it is also possible that the boy's delinquency sometimes helped to pro-duce the home situation. It is not illogical to suppose, for example, thata mother might sometimes reject her son because he was delinquent-in-deed, it is more logical to assume this than to assume that boys alwaysbecome delinquent because of prior rejection by the mother.Most students of human behavior are probably inclined to acceptthe idea that early training and experiences within the family are of criti-cal importance in shaping the later development of the child. Mostreaders of this book are also likely to agree that it is an impressive andcompetent piece of work and one that will certainly receive a great dealof careful attention in future investigations. Its main weakness seemsto the reviewer to be that the causal theories expounded therein are nottoo closely connected with the statistical correlations presented, and thatthe study as a whole does not stem from direct contact of the authorswith the subject matter. Discoveries in the field of science generallyarise from prolonged intimate contact with raw data. It is well to re-member that in the study of crime the primary data being investigatedconsists, not of numbers, official records or statistical correlations, butof human conduct.PROFESSOR ALFRED R. LINDESMITHtRACE RELATIONS AND AMERICAN LAW. By Jack Greenberg. NewYork: Columbia University Press. 1959. Pp. viii, 481. $10.00.When the exigencies of American politics forced the negro to fighthis battles in the judicial chamber rather than the legislative hall, an un-looked for by-product was the production of a fascinating case study oflaw in action. In a situation without parallel in our constitutional his-tory, the Supreme Court has undertaken a re-examination and redirectionof the position of the ten percent of the population whose lot it is to becolored in a nation which gives its greatest rewards to those with an ab-sence of pigmentation. While the roots of this development can be tracedat least as far back as 1938, and probably even farther, the major impacthas of course come since the fateful Monday in mid-May 1954, when theCourt announced its decision in the Segregation Cases. These half-dozenyears mark one of the classic legal struggles which have erupted fromtime to time in the United States, struggles of a political and social nature,t Department of Sociology, Indiana University.

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Origins of Crime: A New Evaluation of the Cambridge Somerville Youth Study, by William McCord, Joan McCord, and Irving Kenneth Zola

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