Crime and Delinquency in the Roaring Twenties

Abstract

This paper reports the existence of a wealth of data on crime and delinquency for the 1920s and earlier. It attempts to demonstrate the validity, and hence the value, of these old and forgotten data by "reverse" replication-by showing that these data yield results identical with a number of our recent studies based on contemporary data thought to be of good quality. This also provides us the opportunity to test and expand further our propositions about the nature of "moral communities" and their effect on crime and delinquency. In addition, we are able to test and clarify further our thesis that there are two fundamentally different forms of deviance, only one of which is pertinent to sociological theories. Finally, examination of rates of juveniles in detention at the turn of the century and in detention now permits reconsideration of the "child-saver" thesis.