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