DELINQUENT BEHAVIOR IN WHITE AND

NEGRO STUDENT POPULATIONS

APPROVED:

Major Professor

Miinfor Professor

Chkir ¥ the Department of Sociology

Dean of the Graduate School (

DELINQUENT BEHAVIOR IN WHITE AND NEGRO STUDENT POPULATIONS

THESIS

Presented to the Graduate Council of the

North Texas State University in Partial

Fulfillment of the Requirements

For the Degree of

MASTER OF SCIENCE

By

Charles A^ Hunter, B.A., B.D., Th.M., Th.D,

Denton, Texas

June, 1970

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Page LIST OF TABLES iv

Chapter

I. THE SCOPE AND DEFINITION OF THE PROBLEM . . . 1

Introduction Statement of the Hypothesis

II. DEVELOPMENT OF THE HYPOTHESIS: THEORY AND METHOD 23

Antecedents to the Study General Theory of Deviance Design and Method of Study

III. THE DATAs DESCRIPTION AND COMPARISON . . . . 41

Characteristics of the Population Comparison of Offenses in the

Porterfield Replications—General Comparison

Comparison of Offenses Between College and Noncollege Negro and White Populations

Official Reports and Racial Difference

IV. TOWARD A THEORETICAL POSITION IN JUVENILE DELINQUENCY STUDIES 74

Methodological Problems in this Study A Concept of Juvenile Delinquency Implications for Further Study

APPENDIX A 91

APPENDIX B . . . 97

BIBLIOGRAPHY . 102

XXI

LIST OF TABLES

Table Page

I. Pattern of Residence: Percentage Living in Places of Selected Sizes 44

II. Percentage of Students in Selected Age Categories 44

III. Family Income of 404 Negro Students in 1966 As Compared with 513 White Students in 1960 46

IV. Percentage of Students Admitting Specific Offenses in Three Studies, 1941, 1960, and 1966 47

V. Sex Ratios of Frequencies of Selected Offenses by Students in 1966 Compared with Students in 1960 55

VI. Percentage of Students Admitting Selected Offenses Most Commonly Reported in 1941, 1960, and 1966 57

VII. A Comparison of the Admitted Offenses of Students by Family Income, Number and Percentage of Selected Offenses Reported by Negro Students in 1966 59

VIII. Average Number of Offenses Reported by Family Income, 1941, 1960 61

IX. Percentage of Students Admitting Selected ; Offenses of Crimes Against Property . . . 63

X. Percentage of Selected Offenses Compared in Four Different Studies . . . . . . . . . . 65

i XI. Percentage of Male Students Admitting at

Least One of the Offenses on the Schedule in 1941, 1960, and 1966 67

xv

LIST OF TABLES—Continued

Table

XII.

XIII.

XIV.

XV.

XVI.

Percentage of Offenses Admitted by College and Noncollege Negro Populations . . .

Percentage of Offenses Admitted by College and Noncollege White Populations . . .

Ratio of Juvenile Cases Referred Per 10,000 Juvenile Age Population in Dallas County for 1966, 1967, and 1968

Total Number of Offenses for Each Category by Sex and Ratio of Male Offenses to Female Offenses, 1966

Percentage of Male and Female Students Reporting One or More Offenses at Any Time—By College Class—1966

XVII. Percentage of Arrests for Any Offense.

Page

68

69

71

97

101

101

CHAPTER I

THE SCOPE AND DEFINITION OF THE PROBLEM

Introduction

In recent decades there have been many attempts to

usefully define and describe juvenile delinquency. One of

the more pervasive concerns in our society that crosscuts

the concern with delinquency is that of race and minority

distinction. In explorations of crime and delinquency race

has assumed great importance and the debate over the signifi-

cance of race has continued as a factor in the study of

delinquent behavior as it has relative to other human con-

duct. Usually, in such a discussion the indicator of crime

and delinquency and its relationship to racial categorization

is of major importance.^ It is now generally accepted by

scholars that official statistics are unreliable as a measure

of crime and juvenile delinquency in the society. The over-

representation of lower socio-economic groups and Negroes in

official statistics have been the subject of many studies,

some - of which: wi tl be more—ampdy described" arid developed-later *

Most sociological studies of delinquency have not dealt

directly with race. Many investigators have been concerned

with hypotheses that are unrelated to race and have excluded

minority groups from their samples. Investigators have also

studied populations that are the result of apprehension,

judicial and penal processes as though they were represent-

ative of delinquents. This latter approach is suspected of

bias tfc> the extent that inappropriate selectivity in the

conventional processes overselects minorities and lower

i 2

socio-economic groups. It seems obviously desirable to deal

with race as a variable employing a technique of subject

selection that is independent of apprehension processes. One

must, of course, treat racial status directly rather than as

a factor to be held constant through deliberate exclusion in

order to understand this dimension of life.

The present study is a response to the aforementioned

need for studies that are not distorted by apprehension,

judicial and penal processes. Its methods are selected to

yield data appropriate to a comparison of the prevalence of ' \

delinquent behavior in different racial groups. It is a study

of self-reports, and is thus compatible with the trend toward

study of delinquency in the general population by the self-3

report technique, as pioneered by Austin Porterfield. Spe-

cifically, the study is a replication of Porterfield's study

of white college students in the Southwest, using the Negro

students of a predominantly Negro college in the same immedi-

ate geographic area. The purpose of this study is to add to

the knowledge of juvenile delinquency in our society as it

may be discerned through reports by those who have committed

delinquentf but in most cases unadjudicated, acts. It is

essentially comparable to Porterfield*s pioneering study of

self-reported delinquency among college students which illus-

trated the weakness of those studies which depend upon

institutionalized populations to measure delinquency and was

responsible for directing the attention of others to this

4 approach of examining the problem.

i This study further seeks to add a dimension to the body I

of knowledge already gained through self-report techniques

; by discovering whether there are any important differences to

be observed in comparing surveys of limited Negro and white

^ populations. There is apparently a gap in the knowledge of /•<

i hidden delinquency among Negroes, particularly among middle

class Negroes. Clark and Wenninger's study in Illinois con-

tained a sample of impoverished slum dwellers which consisted

primarily of Negroes, but, except for this study, the litera-

ture until very recently has been silent on self-reports of

delinquent behavior among Negro juveniles. Other studies

have dealt with socio-economic factors in examining delin-

quency and have relevancy to the situation of juvenile

delinquency among Negroes but self-reported data on the

Negro population itself is scarce.

N ? ' Defining Juvenile Delinquency

Most scholars agree that a precise definition of juve-

nile delinquency is impossible as that term is currently

conceived in our society. It has been said that the closest

one can come to a definition of delinquency is to determine

"what is meant when the term delinquency is used."^ It often

seems to be popularly conceived as subhuman behavior or as

behavior unnatural to the human animal. The study of social

deviance however has generally demonstrated the fallacy of

this stereotype and has disclosed deviant behavior as

6

characteristically "human" in nature. As Clinard has said,

"The same fundamental processes which produce the 'normal'

person also produce the 'abnormal' person, for both of them 7

are human beings." In this Clinard was influenced by the

Differential Association Theory of Edwin Sutherland, which

is based on the assumption that deviant behavior and normal

behavior are the product of similar processes. According to

Sutherland, criminal behavior and noncriminal behavior alike

are learned behavior patterns, and the criminal is simply

the result of a predominance at given times and places of O

crime-inducing influences over noncriminal influences.

The "fit" of Sutherland's concept of crime causation

is improved if it is applied to juvenile delinquency, for

the concept of what constitutes juvenile delinquent behavior

is more inclusive than that of traditional crime. Delinquency

is not limited to acts specifically defined by law. Any

juvenile behavior which is contrary to adult expectation and

conventionally considered to be harmful to the child or soci-

ety may be classified as delinquency. Thus delinquency is

not absolute, in the sense of being a specific act, which,

of course, increases the difficulty of defining the concept.

Behavior which would constitute delinquency in one setting

might not be considered delinquency in another. While we can

usually say that the term is applied to socially deviant

behavior of those who are below the legal age of adulthood

but above the legal age of no responsibility, delinquency

9

remains a somewhat nebulous concept. Robison describes the

concept of juvenile delinquency as "an umbrella for a wide

variety of socially disapproved behavior that varies with

the time, the place, and the attitude of those assigned to

administer the law."^ She defines delinquency as "any

behavior which a given community at a given time considers

in conflict with its best interest, whether or not the

offender has been brought to court."^ Such a broad defi-

nition becomes especially difficult to operationalize.

Porterfield has defined delinquency in this fashion, however,

and has attempted to give it a specific empirical basis.

Porterfield looked to the outcome or product of juve-

nile adjudication for a practical definition of delinquency.

The juvenile court process plays a major role in the insti-

tuted procedure for the determination of delinquency. The

scope of the task of the court is as wide as the definition

and varies from locale to locale. A definition derived from

the dispositions of cases in juvenile courts, as is

Porterfield's definition, can be iexpected to include

inconsistencies as court disposition would be related to the

particular social setting in which each case is found. Age

limits, of course, are not uniform in all of the states nor

is the kind of behavior over which the courts have juris-

diction completely uniform. Most important, however, the

determination of delinquency and its disposition is to an

exceptional degree left to the discretion of the court in

all states. Therefore, variables such as the personality

of the judge and the peculiar social pressures under which

he labors can be major factors in the definition as well as

the determination of delinquency.

While Porterfield defines delinquency as behavior

which violates a community norm, he considers this to be

operationalized by the relevant institutional processes of

the courts and referral to them. For him, adjudicated acts

of misbehavior constitute delinquency. In taking this

position, however, he recognizes that the process is sensi-

tive to what he calls the social worth of the delinquent.

That if the delinquent actor has high status origins he may

12

be less likely adjudged delinquent than otherwise.

Porterfield additionally recognizes the "peevishness" of

functionaries in the delinquency defining procedure which

adds confusion to the determination of who goes to court and

who does not. He states as a truism that some adults are

more patient with youths than others, thus influencing the

determination of who becomes adjudged delinquent and who is 13

not so designated.

Methodological criteria for defining delinquency have

been variously delineated by investigators. Manyx have

accepted adjudication of a person as the indicator of

juvenile delinquency/ so that only when a person has been

formally labeled a juvenile delinquent is he considered

delinquent. In contrast, Porterfield was among those who

accepted all acts that were the basis for adjudication as

indicator of juvenile delinquency. He used as his opera-

tional definition any act which when performed by a juvenile

in some case had resulted in adjudication and incarceration

in the Tarrant County, Texas juvenile home. This paper will

accept his list of acts as an indicator of delinquency.

The Gluecks, in contrast to Porterfield and others,

indicate that true delinquency should be set apart from

chance or occasional deviance. They define the delinquent

as one who repeatedly engages in delinquent behavior. For

them delinquents are "children between seven and seventeen

years of age who commit repeated acts of a kind which, when

carried out by persons beyond the statutory juvenile court

age of sixteen are punishable as crime (either felonies or

14 . misdemeanors)." This definition requires a persistence of

behavior on the part of the juvenile delinquent and their

methods suggest that juvenile delinquency is to be found

principally among those who are consciously committed to this

type of behavior and are more likely to get caught. Research

of Porterfield and others has served to demonstrate that a

8

very large proportion of the delinquent behavior which

exists in our society may be experienced by those not

positively committed to delinquent behavior as a general

phenomenon. Certainly there are those who are adjudicated

as delinquents who have not engaged in repeated acts of

delinquent behavior. There may be some utility to the

distinction that may be made between an habitual or career

delinquent and an occasional or chance delinquent, yet both

types appear to contribute in a major way to delinquency in

our society.

I

' Criminologists have traditionally defined crime and

delinquency in the manner of Porterfield as any behavior

which violates the norms of society whether detected and

dealt with by the authorities or not. Leroy Gould has

recently again drawn attention to the difficulty of opera-

tionalizing delinquency when defined in these terms.15 Self-

report studies have demonstrated the widespread occurrence

of deviant behavior that is not included in official sta-

tistics and the sociologist finds it difficult to determine

what criteria of human behavior should be used as data com-

parable to official statistics. Porterfield's approach to

operationalization simplifies the matter in what seems a

defensible way if not in an absolutely satisfactory way.

; The special danger in testing hypotheses relative to

racial groups with data using adjudication as the criterion

of delinquency seems obvious. In general, there is a

relationship between racial categorization and the process

of adjudication.16 There is a statistical over-

representation of Negroes in most official statistics and a

variety of those reports suggest the probability of dis-

17 criminatory treatment.

Defining Race

It is necessary to clarify the concept of race as it

will be used here because of the great amount of confusion

and emotionalism surrounding use of the term in the United

States. Most physical anthropologists now agree that race

is simply a convenient classification of man into biological

subtypes which has few direct implications for behavior.

That is, all men constitute one species within which race is

a subclassification of very minor biological importance.

Racial differences are believed to have emerged in breeding

populations in geographic isolation, through the processes

of genetic variability, natural selection, genetic drift

*| O

and limited mixture.

In scientific terms race is a means of classifying and

identifying specific groups of populations, but it must be

remembered that race as a social concept is somewhat arbi-

trary and variable, dependent upon the particular criteria

used in categorizing the population. In general, the trend

in anthropological circles today is toward eliminating the

traditional races and reclassifying the world's population

10

in terms of continental geography, based on observed fre-

quency distribution of physical traits. Some would even

tend to limit categorization of populations to small groups

of "local races."^ Ashley Montagu, going somewhat further,

has recommended frank use of the term race to refer to

socially recognized economic and political minority groups.

He argues that this was what the term meant before the 19th

century biologist reworked the definitions and that this is

the meaning usually applied in common usage today.20

Kroeber notes that the term "race" is usually ambigu-

\ ous and perhaps st^ould not be used in socio-cultural

p "i

situations. He defines race biologically as a subdivision

of a species corresponding to a breed in domestic animals.

He recognizes that the md^e popular usage of the term has \

resulted from "loose reasoning on the part of nonscientifi-

cally oriented people." In this way he sees the popular

term race used socially to designate a population having

traits in common, "hereditary or nonheireditary, biological

or socio-cultural, organic or superorganic.

Skin pigmentation is one physical trait that is con-

spicuous in the social definition of racial differences in

the United States.^3 All of the penumbra which surround

race in our society appear to gravitate about this phenome-

non. The present study, therefore, employs the term race

as a social, concept based on social color coding rather than

as a genetic biological concept. By employing this

11

definition in the study, usage of the concept is made compar-

able to most sociological studies of the relationship of race

and social phenomena, especially studies of crime and delin-

quency .

Race And Delinquency

The reports of official agencies which deal with crime

and delinquency generally include race as a factor in the

incidence of crime and delinquency. Most reports have shown

considerable difference in the measured indicators of social

deviance between racial groups. The interpretations of

these data vary. In general, the rate of most types of con-

ventional adjudicated crime among Negroes is higher than

among whites in the United States. It has been often sug-

gested, though, more commonly in the past than at present,

that racial characteristics may contribute to the etiology

of crime and delinquency. This steady may contribute to the

exploration of the prevalence of delinquency in racially

distinct groups since the subjects in the study are Negroes.

Much of the difficulty of interpretation arises from a

confusion of race, culture and socio-economic status in the

data itself. Some cultural and socio-economic traits are so

closely identified with given racial groups that these traits

are sometimes mistaken, especially by laymen, as biologi-

cally racial. ^Currently, however, in studies of the

epidemiology of delinquency, race usually has been treated

12

as a demographic variable or as an aspect of social organi-

zation rather than a biological category. Such studies

are concerned wi^h jsocial race rather than biological race

and are not designed to shed light on inherited traits of a

biologically defined group.

The attempt at systematic, empirical exploration into

the genetic determination of social deviation is in poor

repute. Such research seems today all but impossible since

significant socialization of the person is assumed to begin

immediately upon birth in current scientific theory.

Research into genetic determination would have to isolate

differentiating functions of the nervous system that have

not been altered by socialization. Today, scholars who deal

with race generally do not believe that any causal relation-

ship can be demonstrated between racial genes and social

25

behavior. Further, Pettigrew observes the difficulty in

isolating peculiarities of races where they have become

quite heterogeneous through a biological "melting pot." All

races in the United States, including the Negro, have shared

in this miscegenation process.

Very little connection between inherited traits of any

kind and criminality has been demonstrated definitively by >

scholars of the subject. Among them, the Dutch scholar

Willem Adriaan Bonger presented, in what has now become a

near classic, data to support the position that race plays

at most a very minor determinant role in criminality.^'

13

Sutherland and Cressey have maintained that demographic race

cannot be taken as an independent causal factor in crime

report statistics. They refer to the relatively low

reported delinquency rate of Negroes when they first settle

in a deteriorated area that increases with the length of

residence in that area. The reports of both Negro and white

delinquency rates, and of all recidivism rates as well, are

higher in deteriorated areas than in better areas of a

city. Such patterns of criminal and delinquent behavior

cannot be explained in an orderly or exact fashion in terms

O Q

of racial distributions among the respective populations.

Montagu has more generally noted that no direct linkage has

been demonstrated between the genetic development of physi-

cal traits and those genes which influence the expression

of behavioral traits.^

It should be repeated that although recorded crime

rates of Negroes are higher than whites in the United States,

this does not necessarily mean that Negroes produce more

criminal behavior.^ The point has been made before, but is

worth making again, that recorded arrests or convictions do

not correctly measure racial differences in criminal

behavior because of the differential treatment races receive.

Negroes are with some frequency subjected to discriminatory

practices by law enforcement agencies, resulting in greater

and sometimes lesser amounts of arrests and suspicion.

While the amount of error that is produced is unknown, as

14

Taft and England pointed out, "the feeling is widespread

among criminologists, race relations experts, Negro leaders,

and others that the Negro crime rate is exaggerated because

of discriminatory arrest practices on the part of police

agencies.

Sutherland and Cressey list a number of variable and

irregular relationships between Black and white crime

reports which demonstrate the danger of using official

records as an index for crime and delinquency. They note

that the differential in statistical crime rates between

Negroes and whites vary with observed social conditions.

The particular region of the United States, the sex of the

offender, the type of offense, the area of residence within

a city, the length of time one lives in a given area, and

educational status all influence vlSfe3gt§^ the difference

between rates of delinquent behavior reported for Negroes

and whites.^

Recent efforts to describe criminal and delinquent

behavior also suggest several more factors which in combi-

nation may produce bias. First, the social situation of

people as modified by the physical environment is likely to

be determinant of the types of crimes they will commit as

32

well as the frequency of crimes committed. Second, the

social power which the group possesses will determine

largely how much recognition will be given to particular

types of behavior.^ Third, for some with visible status,

a given type of behavior will result in arrest while for

15

others, the same type of behavior will not. The Negro has

traditionally been lacking in social and political power,

visible and characterized by distinctive environmental con-

ditions, so that a resulting distinction would exist that

may influence the chain-like process from behavior to

arrests to convictions. Conditions such as these can

reasonably be expected to distort the picture of crime rates

and distort the reports of types of crimes which are preva-

lent in a group.

Self-Reports and Official Reports

As a measure of delinquent behavior in a society,

official statistics have been under much criticism. Empey

and Erickson put it dramatically by stating that "official

records provide information only on the tip, not on the

entire iceberg, of delinquency."34 Since invariably self-

report studies yield enormously higher estimates of the

general prevalence of delinquency than do the official

reports, it is usually assumed that they tap hidden delin-

quency far more successfully than does any other available

means. The technique of studying the whole population is

regarded as being a more reliable indicator of the amount of

antisocial behavior practiced by a people. While no claim

can be made here that solicited confidential self-reports

give an absolutely accurate account, this technique has

been employed most frequently as a tool for surveying the

general population.

16

Leroy C. Gould did a self-report study of three racial

groups to determine the extent to which self-report data may

be reliably compared to officially reported data. He con-\

eluded that the two do not gather th i kinds of data which \ /

would allow simultaneous comparison ori\the same individual

although adequate comparisons have been i^ade for groups.^

One problem in this regard is that there ij.s inadequate

correspondence between the items used on the self-report

scales and the behavior for which people usually get

arrested and prosecuted. Self-report scales usually are

designed to measure deviant behavior that is so inclusive

that many acts, though illegal, would not usqally result

in arrest even if detected by the authorities. Gould's

study is, however, one of the best demonstrations that race

as a differential factor is strongly related to "official"

delinquency but not related to self-reported delinquency.

Self-reports tend to show similarity of deviant behavior

in all groups tested compared to officially-reported

delinquency which shows wide disparity between the groups.

Self-reports are based on direct questions concerning

the behavior of respondents, to which they give direct

responses to the investigator regarding their own behavior,

i In delinquency research, self-reports are usually ascertained

\ through a questionnaire that is anonymous. Validity is %

\ dependent upon the ability and willingness of the respon-

I dent to recall the tacts of his prior S a v i o r and his

17

willingness to be truthful in a confidential situation.

R. H. Hardt concluded that self-reports are less misleading

than police records alone and that they reveal a significant

picture of deviant behavior not gained through official

statistics.^

Statement of the Hypothesis

Official statistics show an overrepresentation of

Negroes and some other minority groups among those adjudi-

cated for illegal behavior. The general problem to be

confronted in this study is to discover the extent to which

delinquency is related to socially defined race independent

of other significant social status factors. More concretely

the general task is to determine whether delinquency is

differently prevalent among comparably selected populations

of Negroes and whites and contribute to answering the

question: is there an indication that being categorized as

Negro per se increases the life chances of becoming delin-

quent in American society?

This study makes use of the "self-report" technique

among a population of Negroes in college, patterned after

Porterfield's study in the early 1940's. The data are used,

to partially test the general hypothesis that delinquent

behavior is not directly related to race as a social phe-

nomenon . More specifically they are used to test the propo-

sition that there is no major systematic difference to be

18

observed in the proportion of persons performing delinquent

acts in Negro and white college populations that are compar-

able except for racial identity. In order to test such an

hypothesis principal use will be made of three studies for

comparison. Specifically, they are a study made by Porter-

field at Texas Christian University, a later one by Jess

Lord at the same institution, and one made especially for

this purpose at Bishop College, a predominantly Negro

institution in the same immediate geographic area. It will

be necessary to show that the prevalence of delinquent

behavior of the earlier studies of white subjects is not

greatly lower or higher than those reflected in the racially

distinct replication. In addition, a study by Clark and

Wenninger of Illinois subjects will provide another set of

data with which to compare the present findings to gain

some perspective on the effect of using college student

and regionally distinctive informants to discover their

juvenile behavior. Jess Lord's study, which was completed?

in 1960, will provide a reference point for evaluating the

time differential between the earlier study of Porterfield

and the present one, a time period which spans more than

twenty years.

CHAPTER FOOTNOTES

Among the latest studies is one by Leroy C. Gould who compared the official statistics in a tri-racial popu-lation with self-reported delinquency and found that the official statistics did not give an accurate measure. It further demonstrated the likelihood that Negroes would appear in the statistics far out of proportion to their actual behavior. C.f. Leroy C. Gould, "Who Defines Delinquency: A Comparison of Self-Reported and Officially-Reported Indices of Delinquency for Three Racial Groups," Social Problems, XVI (Winter, 1969), 325-336. See also Edwin Sutherland and Donald Cressey, Principles of Criminology (New York: 1966), pp. 41-50; Marvin E. Wolfgang, "Uniform Crime Reports: A Critical Appraisal," University of Pennsylvania Law Review, III (April, 1962), 708-738; Robert I. Caldwell, Criminology, •, second edition (New York: 1965), pp. 17-23.

I Edwin Sutherland and Donald Cressey, Principles of Criminology, p. 146; Sidney Axelrod, "Negro and White Institutionalized Delinquents," American Journal of Soci-ology, LVII (May, 1952), 569-574.

• See F. Ivan Nye and James F. Short, "Scaling Delin-quent Behavior," American Sociological Review, XXII (1957), 326-311, and Austin Porterfield, Youth in Trouble (Fort Worth: 1946).

^See J. S. Wallerstein and C. J. Wyle, "Our Law Abiding Law Breakers," Probation, XXV (April, 1947), 107-112; F. Ivan Nye, Family Relationships and Delinquent Behavior (New York: 1958), Albert J. Reiss and Albert L. Rhodes, "The Distribu-tion of Juvenile Delinquency in the Social Class Structure," American Sociological Review, XXVI (October, 1961), 720-732; F. Murphy, M. Shirley, and H. Witmer, "Incidence of Hidden Delinquency," American Journal of Orthopsychiatry. XVI (1946), 686-696; John P. Clark and Eugene Wenninger, "Socio-Economic Class and Areas as Correlates of Illegal Behavior Among Juveniles," American Sociological Review, XXVII (December, 1962), 826-834; Harwin L. Voss, "Socio-Economic Status and Reported Delinquent Behavior," Social Problems# XIII (Winter, 1966), 314-324; F. Ivan Nye, James Short and Virgil Olsen, "Socio-Economic Status and Reported Delinquent Behavior," American Journal of Sociology, LXIII (January, 1958), 381-389; Maynard L. Erickson and Lamar T. Empey, "Class Position, Peers and Delinquency," Sociology and Social Research, XLIX (April, 1965), 268-282; Leroy C. Gould, o£. cit.

19

20

->5,

OC

6C

>R. R. Korn and L. W. McCorkle, Criminology and Penology (New York: 1959), p. 183.

See Edwin Sutherland and Donald Cressey, op. cit., pp. 81-94.

^Marshall B. Clinard, Sociology of Deviant Behavior (New York: 1963), p. 36.

Sutherland and Cressey, op. cit., pp. 81-83.

^The problem of defining juvenile delinquency is noted in the report of the President's Commission on Law Enforce-ment, The Challenge of Crime in a Free Society (Washington, D. C.: Feb.,1967), pp. 55-57. See also Herbert A. Bloch and Gilbert Geis, Man, Crime, and Society (New York: 1962), pp. 409-412.

*>10 Sophia Robison, Juvenile Delinquency (New York: 1960),

p. 3.

(a Ibid. , p. 11.

*"f 12 ' Austin Porterfield, Youth in Trouble, p. 46.

13Ibid., p. 15.

14sheldon and Eleanor Glueck, Unraveling Juvenile Delinquency (New York: 1950), chapter IV, pp. 27 et. seq.. Italics in the quotation supplied by the writer.

•^Leroy c. Gould, "Who Defines Delinquency: A Compar-ison of Self-Reported and Officially-Reported Indices of Delinquency for Three Racial Groups," Social Problems, XVI (Winter, 1969), 325-336.

•*-®See Leroy C. Gould, Ibid.

17 Rupert C. Koeninger, "Ethnic Factors in Prison

Sentences for Murder from Harris County," Proceedings of the Southwestern Sociological Association, March 26-28, 1964; Donald R. Cressey, ''Crime," in Robert K. Merton and Robert A. Nisbet, editors, Contemporary Social Problems (New York: 1966), pp. 151-153; "The Houston Delinquent in His Community Setting (Houston: 1945), Bureau of Research, Council of social AgeftOiee, pp. 22-25. A report on axeeutiofte by the Bureau of Prisons of the U. S. government demonstrates the fact that Negroes have been overrepresented in statistics on capital crimes. The report, covering the period between 1930 and 1967, showed that more than half of the persons put to death legally in that span were Negroes. Although Negroes

21

make up about 12 per cent of the population, 54 per cent of all executions between 1930-1967 were of Negroes and nearly two-fifths of all executions in the United States consisted of Negroes put to death in the southern states. National Prison Statistics Bulletin, U. S. Department of Justice, Bureau of Prisons, No. W2 (June, 1968).

1®E. Adamson Hoebel, Anthropology; The Study of Man, third edition (New York, 1966), p, 208.

\o l^Among those who have been very prominent in the study of races and the reclassification of races in the last several years have been C. S. Coon, S. M. Garn and J. B. Birdsell. See Coon, Garn and Birdsell, Races: A Study of Race Formation in Man (Springfield, 111.: 1950); J. Birdsell, "The Origin of Human Races," The Quarterly Review of Biology, XXXVIII (1963), 178-179; C. S. Coon, The Living Races of Man (New York: 1965); and S. M. Garn, Human Races (Springfield, 111.: 1961).

\\ 20Asi1iey Montagu, The Idea of Race (Lincoln, Neb.: 1965), p. 33.

2"*\A. L. Kroeber, Anthropology (New York: 1948), p. 124.

22Ibid., pp. 175-176.

23it should be noted here that skin does not differ generally between races in the number of pigment cells, but the activity of enzymes in the pigment cell determines one's skin color. A. B. Lermer, "Harmonal Control of Pigment-ation," Annual Review of Medicine, XI (1960), 187-194.

2^Bernard E. Segal, "Racial Group Membership and Juvenile Delinquency," Social Forces, XLIII, No. 1 (Octo-ber, 1964), 71.

\> 25See R. L. Beals and Harry Hoijer, "Race, Evolution and Genetics," An Introduction to Anthropology (New York: 19 59), chapter 7.

\}A 26Thomas A. Pettigrew, A Profile of the Negro American, "The Concept of Race," (Princeton, N. J.: 1964).

\7 27W. A. Bonger, Race and Crime (New York: 1943).

,u 28Edwin Sutherland and Donald Cressey, Principles of Criminology (Philadelphia: 1966), chapter 7.

29 ^Montagu, op. cit., p. 48.

/i 2 2

^ 30D. R. Taft and R. W. England, Jr., Criminology, fourth edition (New York: 1964), p. 106.

\'~\ Sutherland and Cressey, op. cit. , pp. 147-150.

32Sutherland and Cressey give one of the better treat-ments of this point in their focus on "Culture Areas and Crime," 0£ . cit., pp. 183-215.

53gu^.jier^an^ dealt with this phenomena in his discus-sions on white collar crimes, as did Porterfield in his exploration of the differential court appearance of college students and adjudicated delinquents. See Edwin Sutherland, "White Collar Criminality," American Sociologi-cal Review, V (February, 1940), 1-12; Edwin Sutherland, White Collar Crimes (New York: 1949); Porterfield, Youth in Trouble, pp." 45ff; and also Gerald Marwell, "Adolescent Powerlessness and Delinquent Behavior," Social Problems, XIV (Summer, 1966), 35-47.

#),\3^Lamar T. Empey and Maynard L. Erickson, "Hidden Delinquency and Social Status," Social Forces, XLIV (June, 1966), 554; The President's Commission on Law Enforcement, The Challenge of Crime in a Free Society (Washington, D.C.: 1967).

•^Gould, op. cit.

3*>R. H. Hardt, "Juvenile Suspects and Violators: A Comparative Study of Correlates of Two Delinquency Measures/1

doctoral dissertation, Graduate School of Syracuse University, Syracuse, New York, 1965.

CHAPTER II

DEVELOPMENT OF THE HYPOTHESIS :

THEORY AND METHOD

Antecedents to the Study

One of the problems that criminologists and students of

juvenile delinquency have encountered when designing research

has been the valid selection of samples. As previously men-

tioned, the traditional approach has been to compare

officially designated "criminal" and "noncriminal" popu-

lations representing noninstitutionalized persons as non-

criminal. The problem has been that of delineating the

criminal and noncriminal populations in a valid fashion. The

tendency has been to accept social conventions and settle

upon arrest and adjudication as the criteria for identifying

criminality.

In recent years the study of delinquent behavior has s

turned from examining samples of institutionalized popula-

tions to sampling the general population. This trend is

influenced by both the evidence for widespread hidden delin-

quency and the assumption that nondelinquent behavior is

confirming behavior learned by the same processes that pro-

duce law abiding citizens.1 The position taken here is that

23

24

exemplified by Sutherland in his theory of Differential

Association: delinquent behavior is social behavior that is

shaped by the process of interaction of persons with one

another. Differences in social situations presumably will

produce different behavioral responses. In the terms of this

perspective the particular social roles assumed by a person

will largely determine how he behaves. The delinquent may

be a product of his perception of his social roles which are

in turn structured by the groups with which he is involved.

We further take the position that if delinquency is to be

understood it must be examined in a larger context than that

circumscribed by officially designated processes and repre-

sented by the institutionalized law offender.

Recent trends have been to make use of self-reports of

juvenile populations to test the theories that social class

is associated with the incidence of juvenile delinquency.

The literature which has dealt with official records has sug-

gested a strong relationship between class and delinquent

behavior but the self-report technique has shed new light on

the relationship. Austin Porterfield and Edwin Sutherland

pioneered in utilizing the general population as a universe

for studying delinquent behavior and their efforts exposed

the fallacy of using "official" criminals as a measure of

3

delinquency and crime. In his case studies of seventy

major corporations, Sutherland showed that in the adminis-

tration of justice bias occurs through differential

25

treatment of criminals under laws which apply primarily to

business and the professions. He noted that a major dif-

ference in offenses against the law between the upper

socio-economic classes and the lower socio-economic classes

is in the administrative procedure used in dealing with

different types of status-related defenses. Porterfield

X

made a statistical comparison of the\self-reported delin-

quencies of college students with the recorded delinquencies

of children adjudicated by juvenile courts in Fort Worth,

Texas. Similarity rather than difference between the

delinquencies of the two groups were found. "The offenses

of the college students were apparently as serious, though

probably not so frequent, as those of youth in court. . . .

.Wallerstein and Wyle patterned their study of adults

after that Of Porterfield. The technique of self-report was

used. The sample was drawn from the general population,

with as much of a cross section as could be achieved in a

mailout survey. The study sought to determine the extent

to which felonious behavior existed in the general popu-

lation. They found that the number of acts which could be

legally defined as felonious crimes exceed those officially

reported by such a margin that it led to the conclusion that

"unlawful behavior is, in truth, a very common phenomenon."5

Nye and others since Porterfield have also departed

from the older conventional approach in choosing their

samples by studying the general population.6 Nye drew a

26

25 per cent sample of all boys and girls in grades 9, 10,

11 and 12 in three medium-sized towns (10,000 to 30,000) in

the state of Washington. He designated children delinquent

and nondelinquent by a scale constructed to distinguish

delinquency patterns in the responses of subjects to a

questionnaire. His findings supported the hypothesis that

no significant differential in deviant behavior is based on

socio-economic class.

Clark and Wenninger conducted researches in northern

Illinois utilizing the self-report technique to test the

hypothesis that socio-economic factors are not significant

in determining the rate of deviant behavior. They have con-

cluded from their data that the class character of the com-

munity in which people live is somewhat significant in

determining minor variations in delinquent behavior and

certainly more significant than individual socio-economic

characteristics. Their discovery of class-linked community

patternsmay serve to clear up many of the inconsistencies

which occur in the literature regarding differential rates

of crime by social class. Clark and Wenninger delineated a

prevalent social class in each location whose influence was

general throughout the population in that status area, thus

producing a class-linked, partial causation theory.

Along the same line Reiss and Rhodes studied 9,238

white boys, twelve years old and over who were in school in

a Tennessee county. Self-reports secured from a cross

27

section of the boys showed "no simple relationship between

ascribed social status and delinquency." Interestingly,

they discovered that the more the lower class boy was in a

minority in the school and residential community, the less

likely he was to become delinquent. The largest proportion

of delinquents from any status group came from the more

O

homogeneous status areas for that group.

Other research has utilized self-reports as a means

of exploring the incidence of delinquent behavior. Among

them, Harwin L. Voss reports a study of delinquent behavior

among junior high school students in Honolulu, Hawaii.

Using a 15.5 per cent random sample of seventh graders in

public intermediate schools he found a significant inter-

class difference in the overall incidence of delinquent

behavior in only one of fourteen communities.^ Ronald L.

Akers made a retest of the Nye study in a larger Ohio city

and sustained the findings that there is no significant

differential in deviant behavior based on individual socio-

economic status.^-® Jess Lord in a study based on Porter-

field's work with college students and court cases found

little difference in the type of delinquency among the

college students and the court cases. These findings were

compatible with those of Porterfield who saw little differ?-

ence in the nature of antisocial behavior among college

students and the lower status adjudicated cases.^

28

In general, however, these studies were intended to

deal with social class as it exists among whites within the

general society. Their findings may be extended to minority

caste situations by making sweeping aissumptions about the

equivalence of socio-economic status and minority status and

by dependence upon the infrequent inclusion of small numbers

12 of racially distinct persons in a very few of the studies.

General Theory of Deviance

In the past half century, conventional explanations of

crime causation have most often been of a "multiple factor"

variety, exemplified by the categorizations of data in the

Uniform Crime Reports of the F.B.I. The more sophisticated

uses of this approach are accompanied by insistence that

crime is the product of many and varied factors that cannot

be organized into general propositions or theories. The

factors in most conventional treatments include the socially

recognized statuses manifest in age classification, sex

classification, and racial classification. Because such

an explanation recognizes the presence of many factors

rather than a single factor it is often regarded as an

improvement in criminological thinking, but it is judged

unsatisfactory by many criminologists because it is too

indefinite, leading to flawed and incomplete generalization

that is not suitable for scientific prediction.13 The alter-

natives are, however, admittedly groping and exploratory

29

in character and the older single factor theories have been

largely rejected in criminology. The link between measurable

circumstances of interaction and the processes of delinquency

indication is dimly seen and hotly debated.^

Albert Cohen added a significant perspective to crimi-

nological theory with his delinquent subculture theory. In

the study of boy gangs, Cohen observed interdependent rela-

tionships among gang members and a high degree of conformity

within the group. Deviation from the norms of the larger

society by some working class boys, he believed, could be

traced to conflicts of gang norms with middle class norms.

The subculture theory, however, extends differential associ-

ation theory to a point of identifying the social processes

which produce the behavior patterns that are regarded as

delinquent. Delinquent behavior, however, as in differential

association, is normal behavior within the context of the

subculture and therefore is a product of the same processes

by which all behavior is produced.

Milton Yinger has cautioned against expecting too much

from subculture theory. While he sees the theory as a useful

concept, he does not believe that it is sufficient for an

explanation of deviant behavior. The term subculture is too

inclusive of varied customs and modes of behavior to be used

in delinquency theory, so he prefers the concept of "contra

culture." While subculture refers to norms that set an

interacting group apart from, not those that integrate a

30

group with, the total society, contra culture exists wher-

ever the normative system of cj group contains as a primary

f " element a theme of conflict wilth the values of the total

f {

society, and such norms can be understood only by reference

to the relationships of the group to a surrounding dominant

culture.

Cloward and Ohlin suggest that the delinquent sub-

culture may best be understood when the concept of differ-

ential opportunity is adfled. Persons have access to both

legitimate and illegitimate structures of opportunity.

Other theories perceive th§ individual as having access \

only to the legitimate opportunity structure. "But if goal-

oriented behavior occurs unddr conditions in which there are

socially structured obstacles to the satisfaction of these

drives by legitimate means, the resulting pressures, . . . 17

might lead to deviance."

Delinquent behavior has been viewed simply as sympto-

matic of relative deprivation. Low socio-economic status

groups and Negroes often develop high aspiration and yet are

faced with more severe obstacles in the path of achieving

these goals than are others in the general society. Frustra-

tions which arise from this condition are said to result in 18

antisocial behavior. The theory of Relative Deprivation

recognizes in a general way the part which socio-economic

situations and environmental settings play in human

behavior. The extent to which one's deprivation becomes a

. 31

hazard, however, depends upon Jhis perception of the oppor-

tunities available to him and a recognition of. his depri^

vation. Cloward and Ohlin state that delinquency is an

expression of perceived denial of access to either the means

or the opportunities to attain the symbols of success in a

particular culture. An Important* correlate-of-this

generalization is that the more univers-al symbols -of success

become ,in the, society, the more likely itr is-for those-who

live^in a deprived" state td become delinquent. Charles V.

Willie and others in this way explained their discovery of a

relationship between deprivation and adjudicated delinquency

20

in a study conducted in Washington, D.C. Two-thirds of the

adjudicated juvenile delinquents there resided in two of the

lowest socio-economic areas which constituted one-third of

the land area of Washington, D.C., with only one-half of

the juvenile population of the city.

As is widely recognized among contemporary criminolo-

gists, there is a need for a statement of a general theory"

of deviance in delinquency studies that will synthesize the

findings in the field and provide continuity in the approaches

used in understanding deviant behavior. No single theory at

present can explain the totality of human behavior; there-

fore, we must look to various sources of knowledge for under-

standing. However, attempts should be made to minimize the

fragmentation that results in isolated findings. The infve&?r

tigation of-partial theories such as the negative hypothesis

32

proposed in this study should provide an improved empirical

base for pulling together and linking the findings.

The data in this study should focus some light on the

theories of* delinquent behavior, as well as benefit' from the

explanations that:" may result from such theoretical constructs.

It has been held that class position is important in delin-

quency causation. The subculture theory recognizes that

lower class children are socialized in the milieu of middle

class values and standards while not having access to the

means of success and' satisfaction. Thus they are more

inclined to engage in delinquent behavior than are children

from higher status homes. This theory places stress on

class position as a predictor of delinquent behavior. If

v^-iid, then low class position should be more predictive of

/ . . delinquency than middle or upper class positions.

Relative deprivation continues to be seen as a determi-

nant of increased delinquent behavior. Pettigrew has indi-

cated that crime is an institutionalized means for upward

mobility in American society, and may be observed among

almost every minority group which has occupied a lower 21

position than the dominant group. Since m American

society Negroes remain relatively deprived with rising

expectations it should follow that these data should reflect

a higher ratio of crimes among Negro populations.

The data of this study can reflect upon the assumption

of caste and class position as being important in predicting

33

delinquent behavior. If there is no great variation in the

amount of delinquent behavior within and between the popu-

lations being studied then class and caste position may be

seen as a-poor indicator of juvenile delinquency. If the

finding of Clark and Wenninger that juvenile delinquency is

related to dominant community types, and then only slightly,

is sustained then relative deprivation theory as well as

independent social class causation theories will be modi-

fied. Such findings would reflect the importance of differ-

ential association. On the other hand, it may well be that

processes other than juvenile delinquency will be the

response to relative deprivation, and hence its role in

delinquency causation may be altered.

Design and Method of Study

As described above an increasingly important research

literature has called attention to the widespread existence

of crime and delinquency which does not come to the attention

of law enforcement agencies and is not included in conven-

tional crime reports. These studies have also called atten-

tion to the problem of defining criminal and noncriminal

populations. The tendency of the past to accept institu-i

tionalization as the criterion for criminal populations and

assuming that persons who have no record of arrest or

imprisonment are noncriminal is inadequate to the task of this

paper. The inadequacy of the older conventional use of

34

legally processed cases is especially marked because the

usage ignored differential treatment of law violators.22

As a replication this study uses the same methods as

those employed by Porterfield in his study of delinquency

reported by college students in 1940-42. Such weaknesses

as might be observed in Porterfield's methodology were

corrected if doing so did not seriously interfere with

comparability. It was, however, difficult to introduce

methodological changes without affecting comparability and

thus few modifications could be made. For this reason, the

utilization of most sophisticated tools of statistical

23

analysis has been made impossible. Analysis will be

largely based upon inspection of proportional distributions

of report for the compared samples.

The data are self-reports by samples of college popu-

lations. The student population in the current study and

the ones used by Porterfield and Lord existed in the same

twin metropolitan areas of Fort Worth-Dallas at the time of

the respective studies. The students are drawn predominantly

from the same geographical areas by the two institutions,

both of which are denominationally affiliated four-year

colleges with limited graduate offerings. The questionnaire

used by Porterfield and in this study was based on sixty-

four offenses observed by Porterfield in the adjudication

records of the residents of the Tarrant County, Texas 24

Juvenile Home in 1933 and 1935. As in the original study,

35

information was gathered on age, place of residence, family

income, marital status and participation in voluntary associ-

ations .

Again, following the original study by Porterfield and

its replication by Lord, the sample was a stratified cluster

representation of the student body by academic class of a

college population; in this case, Bishop College in Dallas,

Texas, a predominantly Negro college population. Whole

classes were used. Respondents were selected from all eight

divisions of the school in an effort to achieve a cross

section of the population. Class sections of a history

course that was required of all freshmen were used to sample

freshmen. On the sophomore level all students must enroll

in one of two literature courses, hence these courses in the

Department of English were used from which a selection of

sections was made for the survey. On the junior and senior

levels an attempt was made to get a cross section of the

majors and courses, so all divisions of the college were

used to make selections of a wide variety of classes in

which to administer the questionnaire. Every effort was

made to include in the sample students majoring in liberal

arts, teacher education, religion and philosophy, and the

physical and biological sciences which make up the different

curricula of the school. The overall curriculum at Bishop

College is comparable to that which existed at Texas

36

Christian University at the time of the study by Porterfield

and its replication by Lord.

The respondents were asked to answer their question-

naire on the basis of their understanding of what each

offense category included. The items included in the ques-

tionnaire and the procedure were the same as those used in

the Porterfield study and the Lord replication.^ Although

no individual instruction was given, general instructions

for completing the form were given to each group of respon-

dents filling out the questionnaire. The importance of the

project to research was stressed. The respondents were

informed that this was a study of the pre-college behavior

of college students. Assurance was given that the infor-

mation was confidential and would not be used in any way

except for purposes of the survey. No names were required

from the respondents.

In addition to the comparisons that will be made with

Porterfield's and Lord's studies and in order to test the

hypothesis that there is no significant difference in the

prevalence of deviant behavior of Negroes and whites, a

study reported by Clark and Wenninger of illegal behavior

of youth in Illinois is used for further comparisons, pro-

viding data from another population of Negroes and permitting

27

comparison of college and noneollege populations.

These data will be tabulated by two different sort-

count methods comparable to Porterfield*s analysis, giving

37

a summary of all responses to each offense item in the

schedule. Cross tabulations will be made of respondent

distribution by size of hometown and family income. Compar-

isons of delinquency rates in each category will be made

with the other studies. s

CHAPTER FOOTNOTES

"*"M. B. Clinard devoted a chapter to the discussion of deviant behavior as conforming behavior, entitled "Deviant Behavior as Social Behavior," in his Sociology of Deviant Behavior (New York: 1963), pp. 36-59.

^Ibid., pp. 49-52.

^Austin Porterfield, Youth in Trouble (Fort Worth: 1946); Edwin Sutherland, White Collar Crimes (New York: 19 49).

^Porterfield, Youth in Trouble, p. 39.

^James S. Wallerstein and Clement J. Wyle, "Our Law Abiding Law Breakers," Probation, XXV (April, 1947), 107-112.

®See especially, F. Ivan Nye, Family Relationships and Delinquent Behavior (New York: 1958); J. F. Short and F. Ivan Nye, "Reported Behavior as a Criterion of Deviant Behavior," Social Problems, V (1957-58), 207-212; Fred T. Murphy, Mary M. Shirley and Helen L. Witmer, The Inci-dence of Hidden Delinquency," American Journal of Orthopsychiatry, XVI (19 46), 686-696.

7John P. Clark and Eugene Wenninger, "Socio-Economic Class and Area as Correlates of Illegal Behavior among Juveniles," American Sociological Review, XXVII (December, 1962), 827.

O

Albert J. Reiss and Albert L. Rhodes, "The Distribution of Juvenile Delinquency in the Social Class Structure," American Sociological Review, XXVI (October, 1961), 720-732.

^Harwin L. Voss, "Socio-Economic Status and Reported Delinquent Behavior," Social Problems, XIII, No. 3 (Winter, 1966), 314-324.

10Ronald L. Akers, "Socio-Economic Status and Delinquent Behavior: A Retest," The Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency (January, 1964), 38-64.

38

39

Hjess Lord, "A Study of Delinquent Conduct of Students during Precollege and College Periods," unpublished master's thesis, Texas Christian University, Fort Worth, Texas, 1960.

l^Few of the studies have included Negroes in their samples. Exceptions are Clark and Wenninger who included low status urban Negroes and Gould who studied three racial groups, including Negroes as previously cited.

-X_i-~~13Les2.;Le T. Wilki'ns, Social Deviance (Englewood Cliff, N.J.: 1965), chapter I.

14See George B. Void, Theoretical Criminology (New York: 1958), pp. 99-102. See also note 50, p. 182.

- ^ 3 "^Albert Cohen, Delinquent Boys (New York: 1955).

^ v I 1 £

T"A Milton Yinger, "Contra Culture and Subculture," American Sociological Review, XXV, No. 5.

17Richard A. Cloward and Lloyd E. Ohlin, Delinquency and Opportunity (New York: 1960) , pp. 150-151.

18Thomas Pettigrew, A Profile of the Negro American (Princeton: 1964), p. 154.

"^Cloward and Ohlin, op. cit., pp. 113-124.

20Charles V. Willie and others, "Race and Delinquency," Phylon, XXVI (Fall, 1965), 240-265.

- 2 In Thomas Pettigrew, A Profile of the American Negro (Princeton, N. J.: 1964), p. 154.

22Gould, o£. cit.

Of course it may be recognized that at times unwar-ranted statistical analyses have been made by researchers but this should be avoided. The decision here was guided by considerations represented in: Sidney Siegel, "Choosing an Appropriate Statistical Test," Non-Parametric Statistics (New York: 1956), pp. 18-34.

24The questionnaire was obtained from Porterfield in person and under his direction taken from a master's thesis by Jess Lord. An extensive conference covered areas of methodology, samples, analyses, problems, etc.

25For a copy of the questionnaire, see Appendix.

40

^One exception was made in the present study from that of the others as to wording of the offense item. The offense described as "shooting with a nigger shooter" was changed tbs> "shooting with a sling shot" because in a pretest of the instrument the phraseology was found to be objectionable to some and unintelligible to others.

27Clark and Wenninger, 0£. cit.

CHAPTER III

THE DATA: DESCRIPTION AND COMPARISON

To test the hypothesis that juvenile delinquent acts

are not directly related to socially defined race this study

substitutes a population of Negroes for whites in a partial

replication of Porterfield's study of delinquency reported

by college students. Thus the present study seeks to estab-

lish that the amount and type of delinquent behavior observ-

able among Negroes is not essentially different from that

experienced by whites when nonracial population character-

istics are comparable. The population used in the study is

a cross section of the student body at Bishop College, Dallas#

Texas, in the school year 1965-66. Specifically, the present

task is to 1) establish the fact that, excepting the matter

of race, there are comparable aspects to the population used

in this study and those in the previous studies, 2) explore

the similarities and differences between self-reported

delinquency in this study and in those of Porterfield and

Lord, and 3) demonstrate that there is essentially no more

difference between the delinquent behavior reported by Negro

and white college students than appears between reported

delinquency in the two earlier studies of white college

students.

41

42

Characteristics of the Population

The population used in the study was a student body of

a denominationally affiliated private college, as were those

of both Porterfield and Lord, for the most part. All of the

hazards of generalizing the characteristics of a college

group to the general population must be recognized. The

behavior reported is of the period prior to the student's

entrance into college therefore minimizing some of the

selective effects of college life. The study of college

populations probably represents an improved representation of

the general population because over the last twenty-five

years the college population has become an increasingly sig-

nificant proportion of younger age groups in the general

population. Responses were secured from a total of 404

students as compared to the 337 in PorterfieId's study and

513 in Lord's study. Of the total respondents, 184 were male

and 220 were female. Porterfield used two separate investi-

gations to secure his information from 200 males and 137 fe-

males while Lord's study consisted of 319 males and 194

females. Thus it may be noted that the present study contains

more females in the sample than males while the other two stud-

ies have more males in their samples. The present study may

represent more of a cross section of the student body than

the other two, having representatives from every division and

department in the school. Porterfield used a selected popu-

lation primarily from classes in the social sciences and

religion at Texas Christian University, Texas A. & M. and

43

Texas Wesleyan College and Lord collected data from students

in history, sociology, religion and business at Texas

Christian University and Texas Wesleyan College.

There is some comparability in the place of residence

of subjects in the three studies. Although Porterfield did

not retain his data on the rural-urban composition of his

subjects he said that his population was comparable to that

of Jess Lord's in the 1960 study.^ In both the present study

and that of Lord's over 85 per cent of the students came from

hometowns of 2,500 or more in population, thus both may be

classified as largely urban, though the population of the

present study is slightly more rural than Lord's. As can

be seen in Table I the rural-urban differences are not dis-

similar. In this study the male population is slightly more

urban than that of the female population with 89 per cent of

the males and 84 per cent of the females coming from urban

areas.

The population of the present study is somewhat younger

than that of Lord's, as can be seen in Table II. Seventy-

two per cent of the population is under twenty years of age,

24 per cent are between age twenty-one and thirty, while

4 per cent are in the age group of thirty-one years and

older. This compares to 40 per cent below age twenty,

53 per cent in the age group between twenty-one and thirty,

and 7 per cent who are age thirty-one and over in the Lord

study. It may be said in another way that over 90 per cent

TABLE I

PATTERN OF RESIDENCE: PERCENTAGE LIVING IN PLACES OF SELECTED SIZES

44

White Negro

Size of Place I960* N=513

1966** N=404

Total Total Male Female

Rural 12% 14% 11% 16%

2,500-50,000 34 47 46 48

50,OOO-Over 54 39 43 36

Total 100% 100% 100% 100%

*

Lord's study. **Present study.

TABLE II

PERCENTAGE OF STUDENTS IN SELECTED AGE CATEGORIES

White Negro

Age of Students

1960* N=513

1966** N=404

Age of Students

Number in Group

Percentage Number in

Group Percentage

Under age 20 205 40 290 72

21-30 273 53 97 24

31 and over 35 7 17 4

Total 513 100 404 100

*Lord's study. **Present study.

45

of the subjects in both studies were under 30 years of age.

Age data were not available for Porterfield1s study.

In criminological studies income of the family of the

respondent is often meaningful in interpreting the data.

The population of this study is characterized by a large

number of students who come from families with less than

$5,000 per year in contrast to less than half of the white

students.2 The data on Lord's white students were gathered

six years earlier than those from the Negroes which would

need to be evaluated in terms of the increase in average

income throughout the United States during the six year

interim. Seventy per cent of the Negro students came from

families with less than $5,000 annually as compared to 48 per

cent of the white students which can be seen in Table III.

Only 30 per cent of the Negro students therefore were from

families with an annual income of $5,000 or more while

52 per cent of the white students came from such families.

In the present study the males tend to come from families

with larger incomes than is true of the females. Sixty-

five per cent of the males come from homes with incomes of

$5,000 or less while 73 per cent of the males and 27 per cent

of the females come from homes with family incomes which

exceed $5,000.

The number of married students in this population was

too small to get any meaningful data on marital breakdown

and therefore such data are omitted here. Similarly the

46

TABLE III

FAMILY INCOME OF 404 NEGRO STUDENTS IN 1966 AS COMPARED WITH 513 WHITE STUDENTS IN 1960*

Family Income White Students

1960 Negro Students

1966

$0-$5,000 48% 70%

$5,000-above 52 30

*Faraily income data were not available for Porterfield's study.

information on voluntary associations was deemed unfruitful

for analysis because of the very small number in each

category and has not been included.

Comparison of Offenses in the Porterfield Replications—General Comparison

For summation purposes the data of this study can be

organized in categories established by Porterfield. Table

IV shows the percentage of admitted offenses of the present

study, that of Porterfield's and of Lord's in parallel

columns so that visual examination is facilitated. The

numbering of the categories is primarily to provide ease of

reference rather than an exact analytical system.

In Category I, "Acts of public annoyance," the data are

not greatly different in the three studies in most offense

items. In general, however, the per cent of Negro delin-

quencies in category I is low relative to the white subject.

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52

The greater differences, which show a substantially lower

degree of occurrence of offenses such as "shooting an air

rifle" and "fireworks in public" may be the result of a lack

of access to the means for committing these acts. As for

shooting spitwads, it is possible that the missiles employed

by the youths of this study are more sophisticated than

spitwads. Category II, "Violation of traffic laws," show

a smaller number of violations in the current study than the

others, but it is likely that Negroes have not had the

vehicles to speed, drive while intoxicated or to drive

recklessly in comparable numbers to the other populations.

All but one offense in Categories III and IV show lower

percentages of report among both sexes of the Negro college

group than are found in both of the earlier studies of white

college youth. The one exception is the slight difference

in female "prowling." Otherwise, substantially fewer Negro

college students report offenses than is true in the earliest

study of white students by Porterfield. For several offenses,

"miscellaneous malicious mischief," "breaking street lights"

and "trespassing," a substantially smaller per cent of the

male Negro college students admit the offense than is true

of either white college group.

Category V, "Personal affronts and injuries," reflects

no great differences in the three studies except for "ordi-

nary fighting" which follows the pattern of categories III

and IV. In category VI, "Vagabondage," there is not much

53

difference in the results except for the offense of truancy.

The Negro college students of the present study show a sub-

stantially lower rate of truancy than the students of the

other studies. Category VII, "Liquor violations," shows a

much smaller prevalence among Negroes in the study, while

category VIII, "Theft," may be noted as being generally

comparable in all studies except for the theft of melons,

which seems to be a predominantly white offense here. The

same is true of category IX, "Dishonesty (other than steal-

ing) ," except for gambling, another predominantly white

offense here.

Categories X and XI concerning extreme violence and

sex show very few differences. The male whites which Porter-

field questioned before World War II are the only group with

frequent reports of indecent exposure, perhaps as a conse-

quence of changes in youth perception and values. Negro

females in the mid-sixties somewhat more often reported

"unmarried sex" than did the white females of 1960 who were

a little more likely to report "unmarried sex" than their

counterparts before World War II. The reports of severe

violence show no meaningful difference.

In general the data show that the commissions of

offenses as reported by the Negro college sample are com-

parable to the others and most often lower, with no serious

differences between races that are not comparable to dif-i t

ferences between the white groups. The variation between

54

the Negro college students1 reports and that of Porter-

field's study of white college students seems to be con-

sistent with a contrast of Porterfield's data and that of

Lord's white college students. The commission of offenses

is progressively lower in Lord's sample and in the present

sample than in Porterfield's sample. The only categorical

exceptions are in the offenses of "unmarried sex" and

"carrying concealed weapons."

Sex Ratios.—Delinquent acts are considerably less

prevalent among females than among males. The differential

in delinquent behavior between males and females can be

noted in Table V which gives the ratio of male offenses to

those of females for selected offenses most frequently

reported. The influence of sex role socialization can be

seen in the types of offenses characteristically reported by

males and females. The men tended to report commission of

offenses at a ratio of four acts to every one of the females,

but there were certain types of offenses that were reported

at a much higher ratio, such as gambling, possession of

stolen goods, destroying property and driving while intoxi-

cated. The offenses which showed the least differential

between the sexes were truancy and reckless driving in both

the present study and that of Lord's. One may note a pat-

tern of differential participation in delinquent behavior

on the part of males and females that differs in the two

studies compared. The white students showed higher male

55

TABLE V

SEX RATIOS OF FREQUENCIES OF SELECTED OFFENSES BY STUDENTS IN 1966 COMPARED WITH STUDENTS IN 1960

(Number of Male Offenses Committed for Every Female Offense)

Classification of Offense White* Negro

Classification of Offense 1960 N=513

1966 N=404

Destroying property 3.0 7.0

Drunkenness 5.0 4.0

Driving, Intoxicated 3.0 6.0

Fighting 9.0 3.0

Gambling 6.0 13.0

Possession, Stolen goods 6.0 11.5

Truancy 1.3 2.3

Reckless driving 1.3 2.2

Unmarried sex 6.0 3.0

Sex ratio data for Porterfield1s study was unavailable! The 1960 study was Lord's replication; the 1966 study is the present replication at Bishop College.

ratios in the offenses of fighting, drunkenness and unmar-

ried sex while the Negro students showed higher male ratios

in the offenses of gambling, possession of stolen goods,

driving while intoxicated and destroying property. This con-

figuration of differential patterns of behavior is due more

to the racial differences in delinquent behavior of the

females than the males. In almost all types of offense

there is a greater racial difference in the types of

56

offense committed by the females than is true of the males.

Police statistics have demonstrated all along that

women tend not to be charged as often as are men for illegal

behavior. To be sure, as Bloch and Geis have indicated,

there is a great deal of deception in the picture presented

by the sex ratio of arrests for criminal behavior. A number

of factors can contribute to the rise and decline of crimi-

nal behavior on the part of women. However there seems a

disproportionate rate of difference in recorded misbehavior

3

of the sexes. Self-reports show a considerable gap between

the commission of anti-social behavior of men and women,

though not as great as is reflected in the official statis-

tics. The studies of Porterfield and Lord, as well as the

data gathered in this study, suggest that women are less

often guilty of delinquency than are men. Table VI will

show some differences to be observed in the delinquent

behavior between males and females as recorded in the three

studies. Ten offenses that were more frequently admitted by 4

the students have been selected for comparison. Consis-

tently in all three studies the males have much more often

been delinquent than the females. A noticeable difference

occurs in the admission of offenses of unmarried sex and

fighting in the current study by females as compared with

the other studies, while speeding and truancy occur with

noticeably greater proportional frequency in the white

student groups. Except for unmarried sex relations,

57

TABLE VI

PERCENTAGE OF STUDENTS ADMITTING SELECTED OFFENSES* MOST COMMONLY REPORTED IN 1941, I960, AND 1966

Whi te Negro

Class of Offense 1941* I960** 196 g* * * Male N=200

Female N=137

Male N=319

Female N=194

Male N=184

Female N=220

Gambling 58% 17% 41% 7% 21% 1%

Sex relations 58 .7 43 7 55 15

Speeding 67 46 68 56 32 13

Drunkenness 39 3 25 5 17 3

Truancy 42 34 49 32 27 10

Stealing melons 69 16 41 17 16 4

Buying whiskey as minor 38 2 33 8 20 4

Possession of whiskey 36 3 33 10 18 5

Loafing in pool hall 48 0 22 0 21 .4

Fighting 61 6 53 5 45 11

Spitwads 77 30 43 2 1 i

13 4

^Selected offenses are those arbitrarily chosen to cover several different kinds of human experiences wherein at least 10 per cent of the male population of one study admitted commission of the offense.

*1941—Study by Austin Porterfield. **1960—Study by Jess Lord.

***1966—Present study at Bishop College.

58

fighting and offenses related to alcohol the percentage of

females admitting commission of the selected offenses is very

much lower in the Negro sample than in the white sample.

Socio-economic status. Traditionally, social scien-

tists tended to relate delinquent behavior to socio-economic

status by suggesting a direct relationship between low

status and delinquency. More recently in self-report studies

the concept of socio-economic status and close correlation of

delinquent behavior has been rejected in favor of evidence

that shows little relationship between social class and the

commission of illegal behavior. The data here show no clear

relationship between lower class status and delinquent

behavior. Taking reported family income to be a measure of

social class status it may be observed in Tables VII and

VIII that the low income students did not, in any consistent

way, report more offenses than did the higher income group.

In fact it may be noted that the upper level group reports

more delinquent behavior of certain types than the lower

level ones. Specifically, "serious assault," "driving

violations," "truancy," and "unmarried sex." This failure

of low status to produce high delinquency is true of Lord's

studies as well, which can be seen in Table VIII.

The information on family income is based on the esti-

mate by the respondent of the total income received by his

family. Of course it may not always be possible for the

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(1) •P co g <D o d -p o h g o (u d o <d •

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d 1 H CP U O -P A •rl H d M XJ 0 j$ m 4i M 2 H (3Q Q B m w o 64 D

61

TABLE VIII

AVERAGE NUMBER OF OFFENSES REPORTED BY FAMILY INCOME, 19 41, 1960

Family Income 1941 * I960**

Family Income Male Female Male Female N=200 N=137 N=319 N=194

Under $2,500 17.2 4.1 8.0 4.5

Over $2,500 17.0 7.3 11.4 5.1

*19 41—Study by Austin Porterfield. **1960—Study by Jess Lord.

children in the family to have accurate information on the

amount of money that is received. It may well be that some

respondents are not remotely aware of the actual amount of

income received in the family but the estimate given by the

respondent does represent a self perception of the income

range of the family and thus the image he has of his family

income relative to others. The average number of offenses

reported in all three studies does not differ greatly

between higher and lower income groups.

Most commonly reported type of offenses and added com-

C

parisons. — A pattern of delinquent behavior emerges from the

statistics shown here. As might be expected from conventional

crime reports, crimes against property are more prevalent

than are crimes against persons. To examine this more

thoroughly, the noncollege student informants of Clark and

Wenninger's predominantly Negro slum sample are included.

62

Comparison of the Negro colleige students with the white col-

lege students of Porterfield and Lord as well as the Negro

slum children of Clark and Wenninger shows considerable

similarity as can be seen from an examination of Table IX.

Some items were defined a bit differently in the latter

study, however, Clark and Wenninger's study included

"breaking windows and street-lights" in one item, whereas

the other studies presented them as two different items of

offenses. Shoplifting and burglary were combined with other

items in the Clark and Wenninger study and therefore are not

available for comparison. Under crimes against persons the

item, "homicide: murder" was related to the item in Clark

and Wenninger's study headed "attacked someone with intention

of killing" and may not be comparable. The "fighting" cate-

gory could not be adequately compared either and because of

lack of comparable data on crimes against persons from the

Clark and Wenninger study comparison of that type of offense

is limited.

When comparison of the Clark and Wenninger data is pos-

sible, the lower urban population in their study, including

largely Negro inner city dwellers, add to the perspective

yielded in this study. Table X shows that when a variety of

misconduct is considered the same types of offense tend to

attract more violations in all studies, and, except for

Porterfield's early subjects, who seem more delinquent, the

volume of anti-social behavior reflected in each offense

63

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64

item does not differ between racial groups any more than

within them. This is especially true when the male popu-

lation is used and some variation in categorization is con-

sidered. The specific offenses given in Table X were chosen

because of comparability of definition which will permit com-

parison of responses in all four studies. No other rationale

for choice and categorization of the particular offenses was

used. Clark and Wenninger's sample of Negroes seemed some-

what more likely to report "extortion threats," "prowling,"

"throwing at cars" or "passing slugs and bad coins" than the

other groups. Interestingly, the 1966 sample of Negro col-

lege students contrasted sharply with Clark and Wenninger's

slum Negroes and reflected lower reports of acts in each of

the above-mentioned offense items than either the lower

status urban Negro sample or the white college students.

Strangely, "assault" and "ordinary fighting" was reported :

more often in the three college populations than in the

lower urban Negro population. "Trespassing," "gambling,"

"breaking street lights, windows, etc.," show congruent

patterns of behavior among the Negroes who tended to report

these offenses with lesser frequency than the white samples.

"Loafing around pool halls," "tampering," "breaking furnif

ture," and "starting fires in buildings illegally" were

reported at about the same rate in all populations except

Porterfield's although the latter two offense items occur

very infrequently in the reports.

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65

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66

One may question any study of delinquency in which de-

linquency categories are as broadly defined as the ones in

these studies and when there are persons who did not admit

to at least one offense. Porterfield, for instance, had a

population in which there was a 100 per cent response of the

group to some delinquent behavior. That is to say, every

person in the study admitted to having committed one or more

of the offenses. However, two offense items, "slipping into

theaters" and "abusive language," appeared in the Porterfield

study that were not included in the present study. This may

affect the per cent of those reporting one or more offenses

but will in no way affect the per cent of those reporting

other specific items. Lord's study did not yield a picture

of universal delinquency, although males came very close.

Table XI shows the percentage of male students in the three

studies who reported at least one offense. In general, the

male respondents in this study averaged nearly eight violas

tions of specific norms, although very few of them were ever

arrested for any offense and even fewer were detained in jail.

Comparison of Offenses Between College and Noncollege Negro and White Populations

A study of delinquency using a college group for the

sample can raise some questions of comparability to the

general population. In order to shed light on this problem

a comparison was made with a noncollege population to deter-

mine how the two sets of data correspond. The lower urban

sample of the Clark and Wenninger study constitutes, as

67

TABLE XI

PERCENTAGE OF MALE STUDENTS ADMITTING AT LEAST ONE OF THE OFFENSES ON THE SCHEDULE IN 1941, 1960 AND 1966

White Students Negro Students

1941* I960** 1966*** N=200 N=219 N=184

100% 99.3% 76%

*1941—Study by Austin Porterfield. **1960—Study by Jess Lord.

***1966—Present study at Bishop College.

previously indicated, the predominantly Negro noncollege

population used here. The selected comparable offenses

include a wide range of juvenile behavior. Table XII shows

that the Negro population differed in their report of the

offenses of "drinking as minors without the permission of

parents," "truancy" and "prowling" with higher rates of

report in the noncollege population than in the college

population. "Gambling," "loafing in or around pool halls"

and "begging" are reported at a more nearly similar rate in

the predominantly Negro noncollege and the college population.

In order to compare educational groups in white popu-

lations, Clark and Wenninger's "industrial city" population

was used as the noncollege group of predominantly white

respondents. If there is any group that can be taken as

noncollege because of the likelihood that the majority will

not go to college this one would probably qualify.6

68

TABLE XII

PERCENTAGE OF OFFENSES ADMITTED BY COLLEGE AND NONCOLLEGE NEGRO POPULATIONS

Selected Offenses

Predominantly Negro

Noncollege

Negro College

Selected Offenses Clark &

Wenninger 1966*

Selected Offenses

Both Sexes N=265

Male N=184

Female N=220

Total N=404

Drinking 37% 17% 3% 9%

Truancy 36 27 10 17

Gambling 22 21 1 9

Loafing in pool hall 18 21 .4 9

Begging 12 8 2 5

Prowling 50 6 3 3

*1966—Present study at Bishop College.

The admitted offenses from this group were first com-

pared with those of the white college samples (the studies

of Porterfield and Lord) and then this comparison was con-

trasted with the comparison of the noncollege and college

populations of Negroes. Table XIII shows that the white

college populations showed higher percentages of report in

such offense categories as "truancy," "gambling" and "loaf-

ing in and around pool halls" while the noncollege predomi-

nantly white group reported higher rates of occurrence of

delinquent behavior in the offense items of "begging" and

"prowling." Drinking in the predominantly white noncollege

69

TABLE XII

PERCENTAGE OF OFFENSES ADMITTED BY COLLEGE AND NONCOLLEGE WHITE POPULATIONS

Selected Offenses

Predominantly White

Noncollege

White College Selected

Offenses Clark &

Wenninqer 1941* I960**

Both Sexes N=2 80

Male N=200

Female N=137

Male N=319

Female N=19 4

Drinking 38% 39% 3% 25% 5%

Truancy 24 43 34 49 32

Gambling 30 58 17 41 7

Loafing in pool hall 21 48 0 22 0

Begging 12 5 0 1 0

Prowling 49 29 9 15 3

*1941—Study by Austin Porterfield. **1960—Study by Jess Lord.

population and the white college population of Porterfield's

study did not appear to be very different, but the later

study of Lord's showed a much lower rate of drinking as

minors than did the noncollege white group. In general, one

may note that there is not a very wide range of racial dif-

ference between the college populations. The delinquent

behavior of the noncollege white and Negro populations of

Clark and Wenninger is about the same. It appears that one

cannot discern a strong consistent difference in the amount

70

of delinquent behavior of Negroes and whites on the basis of

the results reflected in the tables. The college-noncollege

differences among Negroes seem to be slightly greater than

among whites.

Official Reports and Racial Difference

It is not the purpose of this study to distinguish

between those individual juveniles who violate legal norms

in the society and those individuals whodo not, although

this would be a valuable exercise. Rather, the aim of this

study is to explore the extent to which one population may

be found to engage in illegal behavior relative to another

population. This study therefore has been a descriptive

comparison of particular populations.

It has already been mentioned that much more anti-

social behavior is practiced in the general population than

the official records indicate. This fact is reflected by

all of the data. Porterfield raised the question of the

relative immunity of the college students in the juvenile

courts during the period of their precollege days when they

were committing the acts that are reported in these studies.

Much of the answer must lie in the extent to which differ-

ential treatment is given to persons of higher status

groups. The fact that so few of the college respondents in

any of these studies who committed delinquent acts were

ever arrested or brought before the courts tend to cor-

roborate this claim. However# an understanding of the lack

71

of racial differences raises serious questions about the

relatively high occurrence of Negro youths in official

statistics.

Negro youths appear in the official statistics far out

of proportion to their percentages in the population.

Table XIV illustrates this for the locale in which our

college subjects were found. The table reflects records of

the Dallas County Juvenile Department.

TABLE XIV

RATIO OF JUVENILE CASES REFERRED PER 10,000 JUVENILE AGE POPULATION IN DALLAS COUNTY

FOR 1966, 1967, and 1968

Group Referred 1966 1967 1968

White 185 238 236

Negro 677 596 553

Mexican-American 695 673 674

All in all, it may be said that the present student

population reported fewer offenses than the earlier ones.

The fact that the students in this study reported fewer

offenses is congruent with the pattern which is reflected in

the case of Lord's study where the students also reported

fewer offenses than did those in Porterfield's. It would

appear that race per se did not greatly affect the outcome

72

of self-reported acts of delinquent behavior. This is com-

patible to the findings of Gould in his study of comparisons

7

of official statistics and self-reports. It would appear

from these findings that students of delinquent behavior

must look to other factors than race of the offender for an

explanation of the differential rate of juvenile delinquency

among Negro and white populations. More study should be made

of this phenomenon in order to provide more nearly definitive

data on Negro-white differences of illegal behavior. But the

trends suggested may augur important implications for the

projection of programs of prevention of juvenile delinquency.

If such study does little more than to direct the attention

from race to more determinant factors, great changes will be

wrought in the conceptualization of criminal and delinquent

behavior in society.

CHAPTER FOOTNOTES

"'"Information obtained in a personal interview with Porterfield in May, 1966.

2Jess Lord had 266 respondents above the $5,000 level and 247 respondents below. Comparable data for Porterfield's study were not available.

^Herbert Bloch and Gilbert Gexs, Man, Crime and Society (New York: 1962), pp. 174f. See also Robert G. Caldwell, Criminology, second edition (New York: 1965), p. 87.

^The offenses have been chosen from those who have the highest percentage of admitted frequency and representing a broad area of experience, including crimes against persons. No category or offense item has been included which does not reflect at least 10 per cent admitted frequency in the male sample of at least one of the studies compared.

^"Most commonly reported offenses" are taken to be those that have the highest admitted frequency of acts in all studies, with at least 10 per cent admitted commission among males in each study.

®This "industrial city" population was a small eco-nomically balanced, relatively isolated city in which aspirants to college were rare at the time of the study. The families of the respondents fall in the lower class for the most part as measured by the Duncan "Socio-economic Index for All Occupations." The community had a somewhat heterogeneous occupational structure. About 15 per cent of the population of this community consisted of Negroes. This does not seriously affect the validity of the compari-son being made however because of the small proportion of the population that could have been involved in delinquent behavior that were not white. Clark and Wenninger, op. cit., p. 828.

^Leroy C. Gould, "Who Defines Delinquency: A Com-parison of Self-Reported and Officially-Reported Delinquency for Three Racial Groups," Social Problems, XVI (Winter, 1969), 325-336.

73

CHAPTER IV

TOWARD A THEORETICAL POSITION IN JUVENILE

DELINQUENCY STUDIES

Generalizations from these data must take into consid-

eration the special characteristics of a college population.

We cannot claim an adequate knowledge of the delinquent

behavior in society in general from the findings of the

selected samples used in our comparison but only some

insight into possible dimensions of delinquency in the

society at large. A complete picture awaits more inclusive

sampling. These data, however, may give us clues to patterns

which must be considered in designing samples of the general

population.

Methodological Problems in this Study

Although self-reports have come to be increasingly

accepted in social research as an indicator of the prevalence

of delinquency that is superior to the use of official

statistics, there are methodological problems associated with

this technique that require caution in drawing conclusions.

One serious problem is that of recall. The instrument in

this study is so constructed that one must recall all events

of the juvenile period. It is possible that some events may

have been viewed by the informant as so insignificant that

74

75

he does not recall them, though they would contribute to the

real level of antisocial behavior in the society. How many

such events escape the memory of the respondents cannot be

determined. Recall of events within the last year would be

a better indicator of the actual illegal behavior of persons

since it would be easier to remember them. Several investi-

gators since Porterfield have used this approach, but the

approach would have destroyed comparability in this study.

Another interpretive problem arises when many of the

offenses included in the schedule are petty and insignifi-

cant in the evaluation of the legal authorities. Many

offenses reported by the respondents were probably per-

formed in jest and few people may have regarded them as

delinquent behavior at all. Yet as Porterfield observed,

juveniles and especially low status persons and members of

minority groups may be brought before the courts for just

such minor acts. There still remains, however, the problem

of establishing adequate parallels of behavior which is

regarded as inconsequential since the reliability of report

in the official records of the courts as well as in self-

reports seems open to question.

A serious problem is posed by the time span between

this study and the others with which it is compared. Many

variables can affect a population over time that make the

discovery of common bases for comparison spurious, even in

similar studies. It is difficult to determine the extent

76

to which similar populations drawn from different time

periods are in fact comparable. Interpretation of this

study is faced with the difficulty of determining the extent

to which changing Negro and white populations can in fact be

comparable. Especially, the practice of going to college has

changed over time so that a greater proportion of the youth

population is now in college than has been true in the past.

The relationship of college populations to the general

population of youth may have significantly altered. Partly

because of the comparability of eras, an emphasis has been

put upon the comparison of the 1966 data with the Lord

replication in 1960 of Porterfield's study in 1941.

Though Porterfield in his study, being replicated here,

professed as his true interest those social forces which lay

behind the delinquent behavior, his data bore on only one

aspect of this. As he put it, not every youth who indulges

in delinquent behavior is "in trouble"; some are only making

trouble. Recognition is given to the fact that different

motivating factors contribute to delinquency among juveniles

and any explanation of delinquency must take into account

the facts of differential motivational forces. Porterfield

conjectures that the behavior of delinquents is an expression

of the fundamental wishes of all youths, new experiences,

adventure, and recognition and he sees the frequency of high

levels of self-admitted delinquency as confirming evidence

of his views. Although it would be desirable to have a

77

succinct explanation of delinquency as Porterfield conceived

it he did not operationalize or test at this level of his

analysis.

The difficulty of operationalization, more concretely,

extends to comparability of categories of offenses. The

specific categorization used by Porterfield reduces com-

parability with other studies thereby making it difficult to

use a variety of studies of self-report for comparison.

When comparisons were made with important information about

Negro populations the effect of categorization was to reduce

the variety of offenses that could be compared.

As has been stated earlier, sophisticated statistical

models could not be used and maintain comparability with the

earlier studies. Although it would have been highly desir-

able at some points in the study to have statistical tests

of the significance apparent in the data, the operations

used to produce the data, while serving the purpose of this

study, did not justify the use of available statistical

tools.1 In spite of these limitations, descriptive statisti-

cal comparison can add significantly to the understanding

of delinquent behavior in the absence of better knowledge and

it is to this purpose that the reported studies are addressed.

A Concept of Juvenile Delinquency

The findings bear a significant relationship to pre-

existing theoretical descriptions and explanations of

delinquent behavior. A summary statement of the findings

78

in this study may be enumerated as follows:

1. Essentially there are no systematic differences to

be observed in the general level of juvenile delinquency

between white and Negro populations. The differences that

do occur are to be found in specific categorical offenses

and vary from one population to the other within racial

categories as much as, or more than, between racial

categories.

2. Generally, the pattern of offenses is about the

same in both white and Negro samples.

3. Substantially-higher rates of overall delinquent

behavior can not ]?^Nobserved among those with lower family

incomes when compared to those with higher family incomes.

4. Within the variations that do exist there is more

delinquency reported by persons of urban origin than is

found among rural people, though the difference does not

appear striking for most offense categories.

5. Among the groups compared, the Negro college popu-

lation that was studied appears to have least self-report

of delinquency with relatively low overall delinquency when

compared to either the white college populations or the

Negro slum population.

/

6. Perhaps the greatest oepsfistent differences that

are observed are attributable to the greater proportion of . ' ' V

males reporting delinquencies fch^n females.

79

7. Offense sex ratios do vary somewhat with race.

The Negro college female population studied here gives a

much lower self-report in pr

offense categories than do t

lations. Only for two speci

unmarried sex, are higher pr

Negro female college group t

college population which is

lower Negro reports in other

As has been pointed out

operty and public disturbance

he white college female popu-

fic offenses, fighting and

oportions reported among the

han among the white female

more than counterbalanced by

categories.

the level and pattern of

delinquent behavior tend to be about the same in both

Negro and white college populations. Because of the

regional community comparability of the populations used,

it may be that they have experienced, very generally,

similar cultural influences. If this is true it seems to

suggest further that environmental background tends to

have more influence on the prevalence of juvenile delinquent

behavior than either individual social class or race since

neither of the latter factors were related to important

of Clark and Wenninger that

ied upon peculiar cultural

influences may be usefully considered as producers of

delinquency is obliquely strengthened here. The general

similarity in delinquency of the college groups studied and

Clark and Wenninger's noncollege groups does at least weaken

their proposition no more than did their own data.^

differences. The hypothesis

dominant community types bas

80

The tendency of the male population to be more delin-

quent than the female population might point toward sociali-

zation as an important factor in delinquency. The

difference in the amount of juvenile delinquency reported

by males and females in the populations probably suggests

a difference in behavior that goes beyond the practice of

differential treatment accorded women by the law enforcement

agencies. It is likely that much of the difference can be

attributed to the socialized roles fashioned for women in the

society which make certain types of behavior unacceptable to

them, as is evidenced in the data of this study. The fact

that the females in the present study had much lower reported

occurrences of most delinquent offenses than the males may

point to the practice of a more controlled social situation

for middle class girls, especially the Negro girls.

Drake and Cayton found that Negro middle class children,

for the most part, were closely supervised and parents often

expressed desires to "make something out of the children.""*

In general the differences by race observed among females

seem consistent with the picture of somewhat greater Negro

middle class conformity to traditional parental roles than

is found among middleclass whites. The apparent exception

among offenses, fighting and unmarried sex, call for special

consideration. The higher report of unmarried sex among

Negro informants is not wholly inconsistent with conditioning

of young girls to traditionally passive female roles,

81

assuming that specifically sexual taboos get somewhat less

frequent reinforcement than among the whites. On the

other hand, fighting would seem quite inconsistent with a

passive female role unless the fighting took place within

female peer groups, which is likely, and is the case of

aggression displaced by passive role requirements vis-<i-vis

males and elders. Some data has been developed by Reiss

specifically suggesting some relative sexual permissiveness

4

in Negro populations and the theory of displaced

aggression provides the appropriate additional mechanism.

Any explanation, however, is largely conjectural and more

research on this subject seems strongly suggested.

An important factor to note with regard to the findings

here is that of the relative youth of the sample of the

Negro college students, particularly when one is referring

to the volume of anti-social behavior. Apparently these

youths entered college at an earlier age than many of those

examined by Porterfield and Lord. They had fewer years

therefore to engage in behavior of the type that would have

added to the amount of reported delinquency, and more of

them were still at ages in which they had not found the

freedom and opportunity to commit much of the behavior

asked for in the schedule. An adjustment in this factor

may indeed reduce the range of difference reported in delin-

quent behavior between the different samples. However,

E. Pranklyn Frazier and others have noted that official

82

reports show that Negro boys and girls tended to be younger

on the whole than white boys and girls when handled by the

courts. If that difference in adjudication truly reflected

behavioral differences then the slightly younger Negro

college students should not have been less delinquent than

the whites.

The matter of social class as an important variable in

juvenile delinquency deserves attention. Social class has

been treated as a critically important variable in many

studies of juvenile delinquency and these have tended to

place the greater amount of the illegal behavior of youth

in the lower socio-economic populations. Data reported

here, however, would help dispel any doubt that upper

socio-economic peoples do commit delinquent acts that are

in an important degree comparable to those of lower socio-

economic groups. Certainly the data point to the fact that

juvenile delinquency is very much present in upper socio-

economic groups.

It has been noted that the Negro college population

tended to have overall lower rates of delinquent behavior

than either the white college populations or the Negro slum

population and that all groups regardless of the class

designation of individuals composing them were generally

similar. This fact is not congruent with theories that have

tended to focus on racial caste categorization as a factor

directly determinant of individual delinquent behavior.

83

Generally it suggests a rejection of those theories that

emphasize the relationship of class and caste culture to

individual juvenile delinquency. Walter B. Miller has

linked social class cultures and juvenile delinquency. He

delineates a set of "focal concerns" which he says charac-

terizes the way of life of "lower class" people. These

"focal concerns" have a high degree of emotional involve-

ment. Trouble, toughness, smartness, excitement/ fate and

autonomy are listed by Miller, who suggests that th^repre-

sent a weighted ranking of concerns. The environmental

circumstances and the peculiar social situation (such as

female-centered homes) of lower class youths condition them

for an aggressiveness that finds expression in smartness as

well as in physical prowess, in trouble proneness as well

a s excitement. In other words, well established patterns

of behavior growing out of the cultural milieu of the lower

class contribute to activities which are in violation of

laws and ordinances of the legal code. Illegal activities

are often the response to cultural practices that are es-

sential parts of lower class norms and are thereby "demanded."

Such behavior, while not conceived as a deliberate violation

of middle class norms, is considered a by-product of action

primarily oriented to the lower class system. An extension

of this kind of picture has been applied to the Negro caste

culture.® The data reported in this study, however, give

little support either to the class linked idea and certainly

84

none to the application to a Negro caste.

The finding that incidence of delinquent behavior is

less among Negro college females and the Negro college

males than the Negro slum population as well as the white

college populations suggests that, particularly among

Negroes, class-linked low status communities may be a more

relevant factor in the occurrence of juvenile delinquency

than it is in the white populations. This is suggested

since the white college and noncollege populations that

were compared did not manifest differences so great as those

between the Negro college and noncollege populations. How-

ever, the contrast is not so great even between the Negro

college and Negro noncollege populations that it would sug-

gest that this factor is of great magnitude. There appears

to be very little evidence to suggest that individual socio-

economic class difference is predictive of differential

rates of delinquent behavior. In fact, there seems to have

been a greater pull toward socializing the lower classes in

the ways of the upper classes, as Clark and Wenninger sug-

gested, among Negroes. That is, when they are integrated in

the same population, individuals may gravitate to the mode

of the numerically dominant class group more among Negroes

9

than is true of any other group. If the lower classes are

isolated, lesser amounts of this influence will permeate the

group. This again would point toward situational sociali-

zation factors as a very important factor in anti-social

behavior.

85

The power of relative deprivation as an explanation of

juvenile delinquency is weakened by these findings. The

youths who live in a deprived state, yet observe around

them all of the valued means of success that are emphasized

in society, undoubtedly are subjected to special strains and

stresses that may well, under some circumstances, lead to

the emergence of a delinquent subculture. However, the

evidence suggests that other factors may mitigate the

tendency to employ delinquent behavior as a response to

relative deprivation. This is perhaps best described by

Cloward and Ohlin according to whom delinquent subculture

emerges when persons in groups are denied normal access

to the success symbols of the society and withdraw senti-

ment supporting the official norms of the society to create

norms that are more compatible with their own achievements.

These delinquent norms are shared by those disaffected

persons who through common interests come together into a

group. The groups' consequent adaptation sometimes leads

to delinquency in an attempt to succeed by beating the sys -

tem or in some form of retreat from the system. As they

develop their theory of Differential Opportunity they

incorporate a variety of community related factors which

account for varying developments in the disaffected groups

in question considerably exceeding in variety the limited

factors with which this paper is concerned.

86

Any explanation of juvenile delinquency must take into

account the influences of primary group interaction. When

subcultural theory is utilized in conjunction with the con-

cept of Differential Association as Cloward and Ohlin used

it it appears to have more explanatory power. There is a

pull in the experiences of youths toward conforming behav-

ior. The ultimate status of delinquent or nondelinquent

depends upon the differential weight of influence for con-

forming behavior. Personally satisfying behavior may come

in the form of strong socialization in moral tenets or in

promise of future material rewards for conformity within

low status as well as high status groups. The subculture

offers a milieu for the influence processes which take

place, but its socio-economic character has a limited

predictive value.

The general perspective of Sutherland's theory of

Differential Association presents an alternative to under-

standing delinquency through a few limited characteristics

or factors in delinquency reports or a few group character-

istics. Delinquency may be best perceived as deviation

from the socialized patterns of behavior inculcated by a

variety of dominant social groups. It is the socialization

process that is not strong enough to motivate the individual

toward conforming behavior that is not strong enough to

countervail other influences which permits departure from

the expected norms of any given socializing group. If such

87

an approach were valid then delinquent behavior might better

be controlled through attempts at more intensive sociali-

zation of the deviants and potential deviants in the norms

of the larger society as opposed to their desocialization

from norms of a delinquent subculture. When one is suf-

ficiently socialized in a subculture, desocialization

(negative sanctions and punishment) may not be the answer

and could result in rebellion. Positive inculcation of

social norms to countervail or displace those of deviant

subcultures may be a desirable possibility.

Implications for Further Study

The results of this study present numerous implications

which may suggest further study. More definitive data lead-

ing to an analysis of the differential aspects of sociali-

zation of males and females may offer some explanation for

the difference in delinquent behavior experienced between

the sexes, but at the same time may give some important data

suggesting causal factors for delinquency in general. Such

a dramatic difference in anti-social behavior as is observed

between the sexes merits a further examination.

Although social class as a factor has been explored

through scientific research, it might be useful to examine

the effect which formal education as a variable will have

on juvenile delinquency. What changes will occur in the

pattern of behavior of those who go on to college and what

88

are the factors producing those changes? The data in the

present study suggest that more attention should be given

to studying delinquency as it relates to groupings other

than categorically defined race. For example, what effect

does conscious membership in a minority group have upon the

behavior of persons which might lead to anti-social behav-

ior? To what extent does status homogeneity or heteroge-

neity within minority groups contribute to the picture of

anti-social behavior?

A clearly defined approach to the discovery of infor-

mation on the effects of family income on juvenile delin-

quency can be helpful in planning for the society. Although

it has been indicated that low income people tend to reflect

their plight through anti-social behavior, it is not quite

clear whether they tend to do so more than higher income

groups. Especially will it be valuable to know about the

characteristics of upper income families in comparison to

others. These are some of the unanswered questions which

await serious examination.

Improving the present study.—This study may have been

improved by a more comprehensive and controlled design. It

would have been desirable, for example, to have compared the

offenses the respondents had ever done, the ones they had

done within the last year and the ones they were continuing

to do. Such a study would have indicated more accurately

89

the extent to which the given population is in fact delin-

quent, the extent to which it is persistent in such behavior

as well as a better indication of the actual amount of delin-

quency that currently exists in the group.

The sample, from a college population, does not give

the broadest spectrum of the society in order to make mean-

ingful generalizations. It might have been improved by

providing a cross section of the general population, which

may better be acquired through a sample of junior and senior

high school students. Junior and senior high school students

are closer to the pattern of the general population of the

society because the universe is more inclusive, certainly,

than the college population.

The study would have been improved by stronger analysis

of variables which might have been correlated to establish

relationships. However the design did not permit such an

analysis and precluded use of appropriate statistical models.

Stronger analytical models might lead to creation of more

predictive description.

CHAPTER FOOTNOTES

^For a relevant discussion on statistical tests see Sidney Siegel, Non-Parametric Statistics for the Behavioral Science (New York; 1956), pp. 174-194.

^Clark and Wenninger, 0£. cit., p. 831.

JSt. Clair Drake and Horace R. Cayton, Black Metrop-olis (New York: 1945), pp. 665ff.

^Ira L. Reiss, Premarital Sexual Standards in America (Glencoe, Illinois: 1960); and Ira L. Re iff", "Premarital Sexual Permissiveness Among Negroes and Whites," American Sociological Review, XXIX (October, 1964) , 688-698.

^The contacts with the students in the survey showed that the fighting among the females was mostly within their own girl peer groups and many do not think the behavior serious. It could be said that the repressive character of the relationships they had with others led to the practice of letting off steam among themselves, thus giving expression to their submerged aggression in this way.

®E. Franklin Frazier, The Negro Family in the United States (Chicago: 1966), p. 268. (Originally copyrighted in 1939 and revised in 1948); Sidney Axelrad, "Negro and White Institutionalized Delinquents," American Journal of Sociology, LVII (May, 1952), 569-574.

7Walter B. Miller, "Lower Class Culture as a Generating Milieu of Gang Delinquency," Journal of Social Issues, XIV, No. 3 (1958), 5-19.

^John H. Rohrer and Munro S. Edmonson, editors, The Eighth Generation (New York: 1960).

^Drake and Cayton, op. cit., p. 678.

•^Richard A. Cloward and Lloyd E. Ohlin, Delinquency i . . _ - . _ ...

PP~ ancl Opportunity: A Theory of the Gang (New York: 1960) ,

90

APPENDIX A

The following statement was made to each group of

respondents by the researcher, who personally administered

all of the questionnaires, a copy of which follows.

I would like to ask your cooperation in a very important research project. This is a study about the prior behavior of college students from which we hope we may be able to gain information that will be valuable in understanding the college population. Your names need not be placed on the forms. It is very important that you be absolutely truthful about your answers so that the research may be as valid as possible. You may be assured that all answers are absolutely confidential and will not be used in any way except as information for this project. We need each of your answers if this is to be a successful study and each person should answer every question. May I thank you in advance for your cooperation.

91

92

QUESTIONNAIRE

YOUTH BEHAVIOR SURVEY Among

College Students

(Please do not fill out this questionnaire more than once) This survey among college students is part of a study

of juvenile delinquency that started in 1941. Its purpose is to learn the actual behavior experienced by college students as compared with the acts of offenses that have been given by juvenile authorities as causes for court attention. Specifically the aim is to learn how many of the behaviors listed below have been experienced by college students regardless of the outcome. It is hoped that valu-able data can be gained that will help in dealing with juvenile delinquency. In addition it is desired that a comparison be made between students now and those who were in college earlier.

Listed below are some "offenses" which have resulted in arrests in Tarrant County, Texas. This questionnaire seeks to find out how many of these you have experienced. DO NOT SIGN YOUR NAME. The questions are to be answered privately by each person and no identification is to be made of the one completing the questionnaire. Those who answer are helping in a worthwhile research project without identifying themselves in the answer. One must be completely honest in his answers if this valuable data is to be valid. We thank you for contributing so importantly to the study in this way.

CHECK EACH ITEM BELOW WHICH APPLIES TO YOU

1. I am classified in college enrollment as a: ( ) freshman ( ) sophomore ( ) junior ( ) senior ( ) graduate student

2. My age is ( ) below 18 ( ) 21 ( ) 18 ( ) 22-25 ( ) 19 ( ) 26-30 ( ) 20 ( ) 31 or over

93

3. The size of my home town was: ( ) under 2,500 (rural) ( ) 50,000-100,000 ( ) 2,500-10,000 . ( ) 100,000-250,000 ( ) 10,000-25,000 ( ) over 250,000 ( ) 25,000-50,000

4. I belong to the following organizations: ( ) band ( ) glee club ( ) mixed chorus ( ) orchestra ( ) I am a ministerial student, or a major in

religion ( ) I am (or have been) a class or club officer ( ) dramatic club ( ) a religious organization ("Y", BTU, etc.) ( ) I am an athlete

I am an honor student: ( ) in high school ( ) in college

I have worked at least part time: ( ) in high school ( ) in college

My estimate of my family's average yearly income during the first fifteen years of my life:

( ) below $2,000 ( ) between $2,000 and $3,000 per year ( ) between $3,000 and $4,000 per year ( ) between $4,000 and $5,000 per year ( ) between $5,000 and $7,500 per year ( ) between $7,500 and $10,000 per year ( ) over $10,000 per year

1 am: I am: ( ) Single ( ) male ( ) Married ( ) female ( ) Widowed ( ) Divorced

94

DIRECTIONS: The following acts are intentionally defined only as completely as were the "offenses" in the juvenile court cases. Use your own judgment as to their meaning. Before each act which applies to you, place a check mark in the proper place to indicate when you performed the act. If any arrests occurred, indicate the number of arrests for that act in the third column.

Check the FIRST column if the act was before you came to college.

Check the SECOND column if the act has occurred while you were in college.

Put a number in the THIRD column if you have been arrested for that behavior. Indicate the number of separate arrests for that specific act.

Check more than one column if act occurred at both times.

Leave all places blank if the act was never performed. Please be careful to place the check mark in the proper column or columns to indicate when the act occurred. Some acts may be listed more than once, in different ways; check each one. Please answer all points as accurately as possible.

Acts Committed prior to college

Acts Committed while in college

Number of arrests for given offenses

( )

( )

( ) ( ) ( )

( )

( )

( ) < )

( )

( )

( )

( ) ( ) ( )

( )

( )

( ) ( )

< )

( )

( )

( ) ( ) ( )

( )

( )

( ) ( )

( )

ASSAULTS: Serious damage to other person with fist, tooth, or feet Used brass knuckles, club, or other Attempted rape Begging Burglary (stealing by breaking in) Buying whiskey (before 17 years of age—boys) (before 18 years of age—girls) Carrying concealed weapons (guns, brass knuckles, etc.) Car stripping Collection of money on false promise or statement Destroying property

95

Acts committed prior to college

( )

Acts Number of committed arrests while in for given college offenses

( )

) )

( ) DISTURBING THE PEACE: Shooting fireworks in public buildings Disturbing church services Driving noisily around schools, churches Other disturbances Driving while intoxicated Drunkenness Extortion (getting money or goods by threat, especially through letters, telephone, etc.) Fighting Forgery Gambling Hanging on a truck Indecent exposure Loafing in pool' hall

MALICIOUS MISCHIEF: Breaking street-lights Breaking furniture Breaking fences, doors, locks Throwing or shooting at cars Pulling trolleys on street-cars Shooting a sling shot while prohibited Window breaking Other mischief Murder (killing intention-ally) Negligent homicide (killing through carelessness) Operating a still, or other illegal manufacture of alcoholic drinks Passing counterfeit money Possession of whiskey (before 17 years of age—boys) (before 18—girls) Possession of stolen goods Peddling without license, in violation of law Prowling ("snooping") Runaway

96

Acts committed prior to college

( ) ( )

( )

( )

( )

( ) ( ) ( ) ( )

( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( )

( )

( )

( ) ( ) ( ) ( )

( ) ( )

( )

( )

Acts committed while in college

( ) ( )

( )

( )

( )

( ) ( ) ( ) ( )

( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( )

( )

( )

( ) ( ) ( ) ( )

( ) ( )

( )

( )

Number of arrests for given offenses

( ) ( )

( )

( )

( )

( ) ( ) ( ) ( )

( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( )

( )

( )

( ) ( ) ( ) ( )

( ) ( )

( )

{ )

Reckless driving Setting fire to, or build-ing fire in a building Shooting air rifles at private homes, or in the city, in violation of the law Shooting staples in public places Shooting spitwads in public places Speeding Stealing melons Swinging on cars Tampering (with cars, tools, and property of others)

THEFT: Bicycle Purse snatching Shop-lifting Petty (small) stealing Other stealing

TRANSIENT One who is stranded, hobo-ing, beating way) Trespassing

OTHER: Truancy (playing "hookey") Turning in false alarms Unmarried sex relations : Vagrancy (one who "hangs around" a place often and who is without visible means of support) Violation of law I have been arrested for one or more of the above acts. I have been fined for one or more of the above acts. I have been imprisoned for one or more of the above acts.

APPENDIX B

TABLE XV

TOTAL NUMBER OF OFFENSES FOR EACH CATEGORY BY SEX AND RATIO OF MALE OFF^I|^3 TO FEMALE OFFENSES

Offense Category Male Female Ratio

Assault: Serious 20 4 5:1

Assault with Weapon 10 1 10:1

Attempted Rape 3 0

Begging 14 5 2.8:1.0

Burglary 6 0

Buying Whiskey as Minor 37 9 4.1:1.0

Carrying Concealed Weapon 38 3 9.3:1.0

Car Stripping 8 1 8:1

Collecting Money under False Pretenses 9 3 3:1

Destroying Property 34 5 6.8:1.0

Disturbing Peace: Shooting Fireworks in Public 25 7 3.6:1.0

Disturbing Church 6 3 2:1

Driving Noisily Around Church 18 4 4.5:1.0

Other Disturbances 15 6 2.5:1.0

Driving while Intoxicated 25 4 6.2:1.0

Drunkenness 3 2 8 4:1

Extortion 4 0

Fighting 64 21 3:1

97

TABLE W--Continued

98

Offense Category Male Female Ratio

Forgery 5 1 5:1

Gambling 39 3 13:1

Hanging on Truck 21 3 7:1

Indecent Exposure 5 0

Loafing in Pool Hall 39 1 39:1

Breaking Street Lights 32 4 8:1

Breaking Furniture 5 0

Painting, Flooding, Marking Building, Furniture 11 2 5.5:1.0

Breaking Fences, Doors, Locks 13 2 6.5:1.0

Throwing or Shooting at Cars 22 4 5.5:1.0

Pulling Trolleys on Streetcars 5 2 2.5:1.0

Shooting a Sling Shot While Prohibited 19 2 9.5:1.0

Window Breaking 29 1 29:1

Other Mischief 25 9 2.7:1.0

Murder (killing inten-tionally) 1 0

Negligent Homicide 2 0

Operating Still or Illegal Manufacture of Liquor 4 0

Passing Counterfeit Money 6 1 6:1

Possession of Whiskey as Minor 35 12 2.1:1.0

TABLE XV—Continued

99

Offense Category Male Female Ratio

Possession of Stolen Goods 23 2 11.5:1.0

Peddling without License 8 0

Prowling 11 0

Runaway 16 4 4:1

Reckless Driving 22 10 2.2:1.0

Setting Fire to, or Building Fires in a Building 2 3 0.6:1.0

Shooting Air Rifle in City 23 6 3.8:1.0

Shooting Staples in Public Places 16 4 4:1

Shooting Spitwads in Public Places 25 10 2.5:1.0

Speeding 60 28 2.1:1.0

Stealing Melons 29 8 3.6:1.0

Swinging on Cars 17 1 17.1

Tampering (with cars, tools, and property of others) 9 2 4.5:1.0

Theft: Auto 3 0

Bicycle 4 0

Purse Snatching 5 1 5:1

Shoplifting 28 5 5.6:1.0

Petty (small) Stealing 30 5 6:1

Other Stealing 14 1 14:1

Transient 6 0

Trespassing 34 11 3.1:1.0

TABLE —Continued

10 0

Offense Category Male Female Ratio

Truancy 50 22 2.3:1.0

Turning in False Alarms 13 2 6.5:1.0

Unmarried Sex Relations 102 34 3:1

Vagrancy 0 0

Arrested for One or More of Above Acts 10 3 * 3.3:1.0

Fined for One or More of Above Acts 27 4 6.7:1.0

Imprisoned for One of Above 4 0

Total 1,226 293 4:1

101

TABLE XVI

PERCENTAGE OF MALE AND FEMALE STUDENTS REPORTING ONE OR MORE OFFENSES AT ANY TIME—BY COLLEGE CLASS—

1966

Offending Group Number in

Group Percentage Reporting

Number Reporting

Male Female Male Female Male Female

Freshmen 91 99 70.3 27.3 64 27

Sophomore 41 57 85.3 35.0 35 20

Junior 26 37 80.7 70.2 21 26

Senior 26 27 76.9 59.3 20 16

Total 184 220 76.0 40.4 140 89

TABLE XVII

PERCENTAGE OF ARRESTS FOR ANY OFFENSE

Number in Number of Percentage Sex Group Arrests of Arrests

Male 184 21 .11

Female 220 11 .04

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