Crime & Delinquency

Despite the considerable attention given recently to the ju venile court and the central position of the juvenile court judge as ultimate decision-maker in both adjudication and disposition,

Jails have been part of society's law enforcement machinery for a long time. They have been—and still are—designed for safekeeping and, supposedly, correction of the offender, but many are actually little more than enforced meeting places for society's derelicts. In many respects, these institutions endure as monuments to a bygone era of penology.

Statistics purporting to show the amount of crime in a society possess serious shortcomings as accurate indicators of the item they are measuring. The breakdown of such figures into racial and ethnic categories not only compounds the statistical errors, but also introduces elements of general social concern. Such breakdowns should be eliminated in official reports since they contain, besides their inaccuracy, elements which are socially disruptive and disadvantageous.

In law enforcement, goal-oriented guides for behavior must be made explicit. Unclarified value conflicts result in irrelevant or inappropriate outcomes in police encounters. The sources of values are both personal and social. The former are largely derived from early personal experiences; the latter from the outside community (the middle class) and from formal and in formal demands within the police apparatus. The middle-class status of most police officers causes them to emphasize prompt ness, cleanliness, propriety, and orderliness. These values differ somewhat from those of lower-class society, where life may be a battle for survival. The police officer, usually poorly prepared for understanding persons from different backgrounds, finds it hard to cope with the conflict in values. Already alienated in an authoritarian police bureaucracy, he also feels alienated in the neighborhood in which he works. This increases his own sus picion and fear and conversely that of the lower-class persons whom he encounters.

"Persons in need of supervision" (PINS) , is a new category added to "delinquent" and "neglected" by the New York Fam ily Court Act in 1962. Labeling of children is widely deplored because of its allegedly stigmatizing effect. Labels are attached to persons or instiutions, for other than purely euphemistic rea sons, when the inventor of the label wants to demonstrate a more progressive attitude toward a problem, is confused about the purpose of the institution he names, or wishes to mislead the public. Well-meaning designations frequently assume, in time, damaging connotations.

The coming increase in attorney representation of children in juvenile court cases requires careful analysis of the lawyer's role at each major stage of the juvenile court process. Intake and detention are preliminary stages of considerable importance, in volving determinations as to which cases shall be referred for formal disposition and which cases require secure custody of the child pending hearing. Lawyers can play both traditional and special "defense counsel" roles in these stages.

The Glueck Social Prediction Table, which the New York City Youth Board set out to test in 1952, has been validated on a sample of 301 boys, including 130 whites, 130 Negroes, and 41 Puerto Ricans. The second and third groups were not included in the population which the Gluecks used for the construction of the Social Factor Prediction Table.

Results obtained from use of predictive tables developed by Sheldon and Eleanor Glueck support the accuracy of predictions made with the original five-factor scale approximately ten years ago in the District of Columbia. A study of the use of several of the Gluecks' modified scales found that a three-factor table which rates the children as having a high, low, or even probability of becoming delinquent proved most accurate. Sub sequently a further scale focused upon the ambiguous even- chance group to discriminate more clearly between those chil dren who are likely to become delinquents and those who are not.