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322 Annals Am. Acad. Pol. & Soc. Sci. v (1959)

handle is hein.cow/anamacp0322 and id is 1 raw text is: FOREWORD Several years ago the United States Children's Bureau, as part of its program on juvenile delinquency, published a report about the effectiveness of measures in delinquency prevention.1 The analysis was based on the research literature and covered evaluative studies conducted over the past twenty-five years or so. The review led to the conclusion that, so far as formal research could document, programs for the prevention of juvenile delinquency had not been notably effec- tive. This conclusion was tempered, however, by two facts. First, few programs, relatively speaking, had been evaluated, and most of those not adequately. Second, many of the evaluative studies were out of date since they dealt with programs and methods that today might not be considered the best. Moreover, there were hints-and in some cases more than hints-that good results had been achieved with certain types of delinquent children under certain circumstances. This was notably the case in child guidance work and was perhaps also true of the kind of neighborhood work that Clifford Shaw originated. Some of the programs and methods newly entered upon seemed, however, to give promise of more favorable findings. Among those mentioned in the report were various devices for reaching out to youngsters and their parents with services they were unlikely to seek for themselves; for instance, group work with delinquent and predelinquent gangs, case work or group work with resistant families. These and other newly devised programs seemed to be taking up where older ones had failed and to be benefiting both from the experience of their prede- cessors and from recent advances in knowledge about human behavior and motivation. In the present number of THE ANNALS the story of the measures of delin- quency prevention and their effectiveness is continued. Here we have reports from practitioners and research workers who have been closely associated with these efforts. The range of programs is considerably expanded over that shown in the Children's Bureau monograph, and the caliber of the scientific evaluation, where undertaken, seems to have improved. The most striking change, however, lies, it seems to me, in the level of sophis- tication exhibited in the reports. This is shown in the way the work with delinquent youngsters and their parents is carried on, in the psychological and sociological knowledge underlying the work, and in the methods employed in its evaluation. Much has been learned in all these areas in recent years. These articles show programs of delinquency prevention both benefiting from that ad- vance and contributing to it. To me perhaps the most important contribution of this series of articles lies in the picture it provides of the kinds of youngsters that are likely to become chronically delinquent and of the kinds of homes and neighborhoods they live in. The picture is not a new one but it is drawn in a way that reveals, more vividly than usual, the fears and the discouragement and, withal, the wish to be like other people that characterize these youngsters and their parents. The treatment meas- ures described-both those that would improve the environment and those that 1 Helen L. Witmer and Edith Tufts, The Effectiveness of Delinquency Prevention Programs, Children's Bureau Publication Number 350, 1954. (On sale by Government Printing Office.) v

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