SYMPOSIUM ON JUVENILE DELINQUENCY
A CAREFUL review of the research literature bearing on delinquency makes it evident that delinquency is a pathology transmitted from the community to the family and thence to the individual youngster. The relative importance of family and community and individual factors vary, however, with a particular child. In some instances the delinquent act is almost a direct outgrowth of community conditions; in such cases family influence is of importance only insofar as it has failed to prepare a youngster to deal with the environmental situation confronting him. In other instances the delinquent act is directly related to the nature of the parent-child relationship; in these cases community conditions are of importance only insofar as they have been stimulating or precipitating factors or have influenced the parental capacity. Observations of communities with low delinquency rates, combined with refined statistical analyses of the correlation between delinquent behavior and factors usually thought to be productive of delinquency, reveal that in communities that have social stability, little population movement, homogeneity of population, and the kind of interaction between people that represents a sense of belonging to the community, there is very little crime and delinquency. This is true even when such communities are marked by a great concentration of poverty, bad housing, a population of minority group members, and the absence of health and welfare agencies. On the other hand, a socially disorganized neighborhood, peopled by residents who do not possess a sense of community comradeship and participation, will be productive of delinquency even though it may have good housing and superior economic status.