Pre-Delinquents Ten Years Later: 1950, a Statistical Follow-Up Study of Eighty Social Treatment Cases Residing in the Borough of Manhattan and Handled by the Service Unit of the Juvenile Aid Bureau of the Police Department of the City of New York in 1940

Albert J Olsen, Fordham University

Abstract

Juvenile delinquency has always been a popular subject of interest. So much publicity has been given this topic in recent years that the public has a feeling that a sudden plague had descended upon the nation. Hundreds of books, both professional and lay, have been written about it and articles referring to it appear daily in our newspapers and magazines. Observations concerning it become platitudes in American speech. The theme recurs frequently in motion picture scenarios. Yet investigation shows that juvenile delinquency like all social problems has its roots in the past and and the alleviation of the problem is intimately bound to the future. Juvenile delinquency as it is defined today is universal in scope and its causes are multiferous and individualized. In the past twenty years the problem of children who deviate from the social mores has received progressively more scientific social investigation. This happened despite the fact that most states were spending more money to study traffic control than to study juvenile delinquency. However, the essential peril latent in undirected or misguided youth with real or imaginary grievances against society brought about so many issues that by 1950 seven states had taken measures involving governmental studies and surveys for the prevention of delinquency among minors.

Subject Area

Law|Social work

Recommended Citation

Olsen, Albert J, "Pre-Delinquents Ten Years Later: 1950, a Statistical Follow-Up Study of Eighty Social Treatment Cases Residing in the Borough of Manhattan and Handled by the Service Unit of the Juvenile Aid Bureau of the Police Department of the City of New York in 1940" (1951). ETD Collection for Fordham University. AAI30509613.
https://research.library.fordham.edu/dissertations/AAI30509613

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