Abstract
JUVENILE DELINQUENCY.—In Psyche (vol. 2, No. 3) Dr. Cyril Burt discusses the causes and treatment of juvenile delinquency. In studying crime, he points out, we encounter at the outset the fact of multiple determination. Crime in any given person usually proves to be attributable, not to some one all-explaining cause such as “inborn criminality,” but to a converging number of alternating factors. Usually some predominating factor can be singled out as chiefly responsible, which factor may be a legitimate label for classification, but in treatment it is never safe to deal with one factor only, however crucial it may be. In all cases it is necessary, for any scientific appreciation of the disturbance, to make a complete and comprehensive survey of the whole child and his surroundings; we must know the child's physical characteristics as well as its emotional and intellectual endowment. The author, while assigning a due position to mental defectiveness, does not support the view that all or most criminals are mentally defective. Various methods of diagnosis and of treatment are discussed. The article will be extremely valuable to all those who, whether from the point of view of theoretical psychology or of practical life, are interested in the individual and social consequences of delinquency.
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Research Items. Nature 109, 250–251 (1922). https://doi.org/10.1038/109250a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/109250a0