The Young Delinquent in his Social Setting.

This report by the Professor of Public Health and Social Medicine at Glasgow University follows on his earlier one, "The Young Wage Earner", and investigates the delinquency rates among three groups of Glasgow boys between the ages of eight and eighteen. The groups are (a) some 1,300 "ordinary" boys who left school at the earliest permitted age, (b) some 500 physically, and (c) some 300 mentally handicapped boys. The delinquency of the boys is primarily considered, as is natural for an expert in Social Medicine, from a social and environmental angle, with the emphasis on the setting rather than on the individual. The book contains over 20 histograms and almost 80 tables of statistical data, which show the incidence of delinquency in relation to a wide range of factors: age, intelligence, physique, position and number in family, school attainment, type of job, attendance at church, cinema, youth club, housing district, overcrowding, convictions of other members of the family. The bringing together of the statistical correlation of such a wealth of information is of very great value, and in this lies the importance of the book. (It is a pity, though, that amongst so many tables none is to be found on the relation between delinquency and hospitalisation at an early age.) The statistical data are, on the whole, interpreted with caution, and little generalisation as to causes and cures is attempted. This is fortunate, especially if Professor Ferguson really believes that "in the absence of training the delinquency of young folk may be a natural enough phenomenon, an uncurbed animal instinct". The conception that juvenile crime is due to social immaturity, which Professor Ferguson shares with Dr. Norwood East, because it often stops after adolescence, is not convincing, since in adult life the social maladjustment previously expressed in delinquent acts may later take different forms such as poor personal relationships (which in their turn, of course, produce a new generation of delinquents!) and poor work performance. Professor Ferguson's figures justify some general impressions on the subject: the small stunted boy is indeed the delinquent par excellence, badly undersized boys have a high delinquency rate, and among these the proportion of boys convicted more than once is relatively higher still?about 94% greater than that for boys with more than one conviction in the survey as a whole. Among the undersized, delinquency is shown as just as heavy among church attenders as among non-attenders?in contrast to the average sized boy whose church attendance goes with a higher moral code. On the other hand, some other popular beliefs are contradicted by the factors of this report: the mother at work out of the home does not