Kids, Groups and Crime: Some Implications of a Well-Known Secret

Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology, May 2013

By Franklin E. Zimring, Published on 01/01/81

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Kids, Groups and Crime: Some Implications of a Well-Known Secret

Recommended Citation Franklin E. Zimring, Kids, Groups and Crime: Some Implications of a Well-Known Secret Kids, Groups and Crime: Some Implications of a Well-Known Secret Franklin E. Zimring 0 1 0 Part of the Criminal Law Commons, Criminology Commons, and the Criminology and Criminal Justice Commons 1 Thi s Criminal Law is brought to you for free and open access by Northwestern University School of Law Scholarly Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology by an authorized editor of Northwestern University School of Law Scholarly Commons - CRIMINAL LAW KIDS, GROUPS AND CRIME: SOME IMPLICATIONS OF A WELL-KNOWN SECRET* FRANKLIN E. ZIMRING** Social and policy sciences, reflecting human nature, are rich in contradiction and are occasionally perverse. It is sometimes possible both to know something important and to ignore that knowledge. To do this is to generate the phenomenon of the well-known secret, an obvious fact we ignore. When Edgar Allen Poe suggested that the best location to hide something is the most obvious place, he was teaching applied law and social science. This article is about youth crime and sentencing policy. The "wellknown secret" is this: adolescents commit crimes, as they live their lives, in groups. While the empirical evidence for this hypothesis is at least fifty years old, the consequences of this simple and important finding are frequently ignored when we measure crime, pass laws, and postulate theories of criminal activity. The problems associated with ignoring the obvious have grown more serious in recent years, as the study of criminal behavior has shifted from its sociological origins into a wide spectrum of social, behavioral, economic, and policy science disciplinary sub-specialties. We have failed to ask the right questions and have risked answering the questions we ask in the wrong way because we did not appreciate what we already know. The sentiments expressed in this article are strong: the burden of * The research reported in these pages was supported by Grant DJ/LEAA 79NI-AX0072, National Institute of Justice. The data for analysis were provided by Wesley Skogan, Northwestern University; the Rand Corporation, Santa Monica, California: the Vera Institute of Justice, New York City; and Philip Cook, Duke University. My primary intellectual creditors in this venture include Peter Greenwood and Joan Petersilia, Rand Corp.; Gordon Hawkins, University of Sydney; Alfred Blumstein, Carnegie-Mellon University; Albert Reiss, Yale University and Norval Morris, University of Chicago. ** Professor of Law and Director, Center for Studies in Criminal Justice, University of Chicago; J.D. University of Chicago, 1967; B.A. Wayne State University, 1963. FRINKLINE. ZIMRNG[Vo proof is mine. I shall attempt to meet that burden in two stages. Part I discusses some evidence on adolescent crime as group behavior that emerged from the pioneering studies of the Chicago School in the 1920s, and supplements this rich information with more recent crime specific estimates of group criminality. Part II catalogues some of the things we do not know as a consequence of ignoring the obvious. I. KIDS, GROUPS AND CRIME: THEN AND Now Clifford Shaw and Henry McKay wrote a major study for the first National Commission on Crime. The year was 1931. The title was Male juvenile Delinquengas Group Behavior.1 The essay was based on an analysis of all boys who appeared in the Cook County, Illinois Juvenile Court charged with delinquency during 1928. The analysis justified the title of their essay, as shown in their original Figure 9, now labeled Figure 1. Percent 50 0 10 20 30 40 60 70 80 90 100 Group offenders Eight out of ten boys accused of delinquency were alleged to have committed their offenses in the company of one or more companions. Shaw and McKay extended this analysis by specifying the number of participants alleged in the 1928 petition sample as shown in Figure 2, their original Figure 10. While these findings were dramatic, they were not surprising. A 1923 study of theft offenders in the same court had found that nine out of ten males charged with theft were believed to have committed their offenses in groups.2 1 C. SHAw & H. McKAY, Malejuvenile Ddeinuen as GroupBehavior in Report on the Causes of Crime, 191-99 [II WICKERSHAM COMM'N REP., No. 13 (1931)], reprinted as Chapter 17 in THE SOCIAL FABRIC OF THE METROPOLIS (J. Short ed. 1971). [hereinafter cited as THE SOCIAL FABRIC]. 2 See id., THE SOCIAL FABRIC, at 256, n.2. More recent data on the relationship between groups and adolescent criminality are needed for two reasons. First, 1928 was quite a while ago. Second, the petty thieves depicted by Shaw and McKay hardly fit the contemporary image of serious delinquency in the American 30.3 27.7 17 1 1 2 3 4 5 6 Number of Participants FIGURE 2 1.0 7 1.01 8 &over PERCENTAGE DISTRIBUTION OF OFFENDERS BROUGHT TO COURT BY NUMBER OF PARTICIPANTS (...truncated)


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Franklin E. Zimring. Kids, Groups and Crime: Some Implications of a Well-Known Secret, Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology, 2013, Volume 72, Issue 3,