Cambridge-Somerville Youth Study Research Articles

Standing on the shoulders of pioneers in experimental criminology: the Cambridge-Somerville Youth Study at 85 years (1935–2020) and beyond: the 2021 Joan McCord Award Lecture

Standing on the shoulders of pioneers in experimental criminology: the Cambridge-Somerville Youth Study at 85 years (1935–2020) and beyond: the 2021 Joan McCord Award Lecture

Early Developmental Crime Prevention Forged Through Knowledge Translation: a Window into a Century of Prevention Experiments

To begin to develop an understanding of knowledge translation of early developmental crime prevention. Involves a narrative review of experiments of early developmental prevention with measures of delinquency and criminal offending, and profiles two leading experiments, the Cambridge-Somerville Youth Study (CSYS) and the Montreal Longitudinal-Experimental Study. While the roots of early developmental crime prevention can be traced to studies of human development, experiments of preventive interventions are at the heart of knowledge translation and policy influence. This can be seen in the form of replications, the process of scaling up effective interventions for wider dissemination, and inspiration for prevention scientists to launch new and innovative experiments—sometimes with the aim to improve upon past results. For example, far from curtailing policy interest in a developmental approach to delinquency prevention or dampening the need for prevention experiments, the harmful effects reported in the 30-year follow-up of the CSYS instead had an influence on some new longitudinal-experimental studies in developmental and life-course criminology. New experiments are needed to continue to advance early developmental crime prevention, and further research is needed to add to our understanding of knowledge translation in this area.

Association of a Crime Prevention Program for Boys With Mortality 72 Years After the Intervention

Mortality is an important outcome in evaluating crime prevention programs, but little is known about the effects on mortality during the full life course. To determine the long-term outcomes of a crime prevention program on mortality and whether the iatrogenic effects on mortality observed in middle age persist or change in old age. This longitudinal follow-up was conducted in a cohort of boys included in a matched-pair randomized clinical trial (the Cambridge-Somerville Youth Study). Six hundred fifty boys aged 5 to 13 years who lived and attended public and parochial schools in working-class areas of Cambridge and Somerville, Massachusetts, and were identified as at risk for antisocial behavior were matched by age and demographic characteristics. One member of each pair was randomly allocated to the treatment condition. The original trial was performed from June 1, 1939, to December 1945. Follow-up in the present analysis was performed from January 2016 through June 2018. Treatment group participants received individual counseling through a range of activities and home visits for an extended duration (mean, 5.5 years). Control group participants received no special services. The 4 outcomes of interest include age at mortality, mortality at latest follow-up, premature mortality (younger than 40 years), and cause of mortality (natural vs unnatural). In the original analysis, 650 participants were matched and randomized to treatment or control conditions, of whom 506 were retained in the analysis (mean [SD] age, 9.8 [1.7] years). Through early 2018, records for 488 participants (96.4%) were located. A total of 446 participants were confirmed dead (88.1%) and 42 alive (8.3%). Matched-pairs analyses showed no significant differences between the treatment and control groups for mortality at latest follow-up (relative risk [RR], 1.05; 95% CI, 0.99-1.11), premature mortality (RR, 1.15; 95% CI, 0.55-2.43), or cause of mortality (RR, 1.19; 95% CI, 0.65-2.18) (P > .05 for all). Cox proportional hazard regression indicated no difference in time to death between groups (hazard ratio, 1.18; 95% CI, 0.98-1.41; P = .09). Iatrogenic effects on mortality were not detected in this long-term follow-up. The longitudinal analysis provides information on the utility of life-long assessments of crime prevention programs and draws attention to the need for quality-of-life assessments of participants and their children.

Crime and the Life-Course, Prevention, Experiments, and Truth Seeking: Joan McCord's Pioneering Contributions to Criminology

A life-span developmental approach describes Joan McCord's career and highlights her pioneering contributions to criminology and, more broadly, to understanding human development. The main focus of this article is on her exceptional scientific contributions through the assessment of the Cambridge-Somerville Youth Study experimental preventive intervention. We highlight her efforts to understand how a delinquency prevention intervention caused iatrogenic effects and the lessons she drew for evaluation research. Important contributions to key issues in developmental criminology are summarized, such as the different roles of mothers, fathers, and neighborhoods in the development of delinquency as well as the importance of differentiating discipline from punishment. We describe how Dr. McCord relied on philosophy, how she tackled oppositions between theory-driven and data-driven research in criminology, and how she helped young investigators learn how to learn, and we end by highlighting her contributions to the organization and development of criminology in the United States and around the world.

Criminal Offending and Mortality over the Full Life-Course: A 70-Year Follow-up of the Cambridge–Somerville Youth Study

To investigate the relationship between criminal offending and mortality over the full life-course of treatment group participants in the Cambridge–Somerville Youth Study (CSYS). The CSYS is a delinquency prevention experiment and prospective longitudinal survey of the development of offending. Begun in 1939, the study involves 506 at-risk boys, ages 5–13 years (mean birth year = 1928), from Cambridge and Somerville, Massachusetts. Following the analytic strategy of Joan McCord, participants are drawn from the study’s longitudinal arm (N = 253). Data include court convictions of criminal offenses collected during middle age (mean = 47) and death records collected during old age (up to age 89). Death records were collected for 216 participants or 85.4% of the sample. Life-course persistent offenders experience earlier mortality compared to non-offenders (by about 7 years) and adolescent-limited offenders (by about 8 years). While life-course persistent offenders are not more likely to die early (< 40 years) compared to other trajectory groups, they are more likely to experience premature mortality from late middle age into old age. Life-course persistent offenders are also more likely to experience unnatural deaths, with alcoholism confounding the relationship. That group differences in mortality risk did not emerge until age 55 (while offending is in decline) suggests that the relationship between offending and mortality is not direct and may be spurious. Knowledge about the relationship between criminal offending and mortality can be greatly improved by following participants into old age.

The first delinquency prevention experiment: a socio-historical review of the origins of the Cambridge-Somerville Youth Study’s research design

Begun in 1939, the Cambridge-Somerville Youth Study (CSYS) is recognized as the first delinquency prevention experiment and the earliest example of a longitudinal–experimental study with criminological outcomes. This paper aims to develop a historical understanding of the origins of the study’s research design. The present study is guided by the socio-historical approach and informed by past historical research in criminology. It draws upon a wide array of archival records and published works from the late nineteenth century to the present day. Richard Clarke Cabot designed and directed the CSYS. Major influences on the study’s research design can be traced to Cabot’s medical practice and research, his advocacy for social work practice and research, and his professional relationship with the Gluecks. The beginnings of experimentation in the social sciences during the early twentieth century may have also played a role. Joan McCord’s early involvement in the study proved instrumental to its longitudinal component. The rigorous and innovative research design of the CSYS marks an important chapter in the history of experimental criminology, and its influence continues to this day. New experimental studies on the prevention of crime and delinquency must continue to strive to advance scientific knowledge and improve public policy.

Delinquency prevention for individual change: Richard Clarke Cabot and the making of the Cambridge-Somerville Youth Study

PurposeRichard Clarke Cabot (1868–1939) designed and directed one of criminology's most well-known delinquency prevention programs and the field's first randomized controlled experiment: the Cambridge-Somerville Youth Study (CSYS). This paper aims to develop an historical understanding of the making of the CSYS through a focus on Cabot. MethodsThe present study is guided by the socio-historical approach and informed by past historical research in criminology. It draws upon a wide array of archival records and published works from the late 19th century to present day. ResultsThe CSYS came to fruition through a culmination of personal, professional, and institutional influences on Cabot, including: his ideals and sense of pragmatism, refined by his transition from medicine to social ethics and social work; criminological luminaries in the 1920s and 1930s, who focused on the individual over the environment—most notably, William Healy and Augusta Bronner and Sheldon and Eleanor Glueck; and Cabot's concern with the failures of treatment of offenders. ConclusionsThe study's early history and its lineage to Joan McCord's research on the study allows us to discern some of its legacies for delinquency prevention today, including application of the experimental design and a holistic view of delinquency prevention. The CSYS continues to have an influence on criminological thinking and research.

Examining the Historical Developments and Contemporary Relevance of the Longitudinal–Experimental Design of the Cambridge-Somerville Youth Study: Utility for Research on Intergenerational Transmission of Offending

Founded in 1939, the Cambridge-Somerville Youth Study represents the earliest longitudinal–experimental study in developmental crime prevention, combining the aims of understanding how the developmental process is related to future offending (i.e., longitudinal focus) as well as attempting to prevent offending through an experimental intervention during early adolescence. This article examines the historical context in which this novel design arose and provides a review of studies performed by Joan McCord based on her age-45 follow up of the study. The study made possible decades of research on developmental risk factors for delinquency and criminal offending. A central question that arises from McCord’s body of research is how these risk factors are transmitted from parents to children. This article reviews extant research on the transmission of intergenerational offending, and discusses the potential of the Cambridge-Somerville Youth Study to contribute to this literature. Specifically, the prospective longitudinal design makes it possible to include the children of the study participants and investigate the intergenerational transmission of offending, while the longitudinal–experimental design allows for the investigation of the transmission of treatment effects. This potential research stands as a testament to the study’s design and vision.

Examining the Iatrogenic Effects of the Cambridge-Somerville Youth Study: Existing Explanations and New Appraisals

Examining the Iatrogenic Effects of the Cambridge-Somerville Youth Study: Existing Explanations and New Appraisals

The Impact of Different Family Configurations on Delinquency

How do outcomes of boys who had experienced family disruption before age 12 years compare with those from intact families? This paper is based on a sample of 21,314 Swiss male recruits who completed a cross-sectional survey at age 20 years. As in the Cambridge Study, disrupted families predicted offending. However, intact high-conflict families predicted the same prevalence of offending as disrupted families. Boys not living with their mother, especially when they had lived in institutions before age 12 years, were most likely to become persistent offenders. Therefore, the dichotomy of disrupted versus intact family hides many important sub-groups, including those living with their mother (low-risk) and those who had experienced institutional rearing (high-risk). Background Many family factors have been shown to predict offending, including factors relating to child-rearing practices (e.g. harsh discipline, poor supervision and low parental involvement with the child) and factors relating to family characteristics (e.g. broken homes, parental conflict and family criminality) (see Farrington 2002). This paper focuses on family disruption which ‘seems to be as strong a predictor of self-reported and official delinquency as other major risk factors such as low family income, large family size, poor child-rearing, poor parental supervision, low IQ, low attainment and hyperactivity’ (Juby and Farrington 2001: 23). Interest in researching the link between disrupted families and delinquency has grown since the 1960s, largely because of the rise in both disrupted families and delinquency rates in Western industrialized countries. Rodgers and Pryor (1998) renewed research on disrupted families and estimated that the risk of delinquency for children from broken homes was double that for children from intact homes. In the Newcastle Thousand Family Study (UK), Kolvin, Miller, Fleeting and Kolvin (1988) found that 53 per cent of the boys from families where the parents had separated or divorced before age five years were convicted up to age 32 years, compared with 28 per cent of the other boys. However, research shows that the relationship between family disruption and delinquency is a complex one. In the CambridgeSomerville Youth Study in Boston (US), McCord (1982) examined serious offending among 232 adolescents from broken homes due to loss of the natural father, taking into account the level of parental conflict and whether or not the mother was loving.

Explanations for Apparent Late Onset Criminality in a High-Risk Sample of Children Followed up in Adult Life

We examined the psychiatric and forensic histories of 13 individuals whose first officially recorded criminal conviction took place after their 22nd birthday, and compared the levels of disturbance among that group with those from the same high-risk sample who had (a) no recorded convictions, (b) convictions only up to age 21, and (c) convictions before and after age 22. Among the 13 with recorded convictions only after age 22, there was evidence of at least minor juvenile delinquency in every case but one, and of major adult mental illness whose onset preceded first conviction in four cases. Levels of childhood antisocial behaviours were significantly higher among that group than among those who had never been convicted, and levels of major mental illness were significantly higher than among those who had never been convicted and those with convictions only up to age 21. Apparent late onset criminality in the present sample was therefore associated with known risk factors for adult criminality, in the form of juvenile antisocial behaviour and/or major mental illness. Officially recorded criminality consistently shows a small but significant number of individuals whose criminal activity appears to begin relatively late in life, that is after adolescence. In one large follow-up of unselected schoolchildren in Sweden, for example, 25 per cent of the males with a criminal record had their first conviction aged 21 or older. Among the females, 52 per cent of those with a criminal record had their first conviction at 21 or older (Stattin et al. 1989). The number of males with registered criminality only after age 21 (64 out of 709) was smaller by comparison with other groups of offenders than would be predicted from a random model (Stattin and Magnusson 1996), but still represented 9 per cent of the total male sample. In another unselected birth cohort of over 6,000 females born in Stockholm, Sweden in 1953, criminal records data revealed that 237 individuals had their first criminal registration after age 18. At 3.5 per cent of the total sample this was the largest group of offenders, compared with those who began offending before age 15 and persisted throughout life, those who offended only during adolescence, and those who offended in a less persistent way before and after age 18 (Kratzer and Hodgins 1996). Similar proportions with apparent late onset criminality have been found among groups who would be expected to be at higher risk for criminality, like clinic samples and those enrolled in social interventions. In McCord’s (1978) follow-up of 506 boys in the Cambridge-Somerville Youth Study, 41 of the 317 boys (13 per cent) with no official juvenile record of delinquency were convicted of serious crimes as adults, with few

Long-term follow-up as program evaluation: lessons from McCord's 30-year follow-up of the Cambridge-Somerville Youth Study.

In the context of earlier work on the Cambridge-Somerville Youth Study, McCord's recent 30-year follow-up is seen as raising issues with respect to the controlled experiment as a basis for evaluation and study of psychotherapeutic effects. The follow-up's general conclusion that "treatment" produces insidious long-term side-effects is challenged, and its specific stated conclusions are deemed unwarranted by the conceptualizations and evidence presented.

A thirty-year follow-up of treatment effects.

A thirty-year follow-up of treatment effects.

Early Identification and Intensive Treatment of Predelinquents: A Negative View

The identification and intensive delinquents youngsters already in the early approach to delinquency control stages of a delinquent way of life, or young is breathtakingly plausible. This explains sters who have been exposed to circum its popularity. A plausible argument is stances known to cause delinquency? The not necessarily correct, as Columbus showed Cambridge-Somerville Youth Study empha those who believed that the world is flat, sized the first approach to prediction.1 Pre identification and intensive treatdelinquents were nominated by teachers ment, though probably not as erroneous and policemen. The expectation of adoles as the flat-world theory, is more a slogan cent delinquency was primarily an extrap or a rallying cry than a realistic assessment olation from quasi-delinquent behavior of the difficulties that delinquency control during preadolescence. Thus, the three programs must overcome. This paper will raters on the Cambridge-Somerville research attempt to analyze the need for sharper team predicted that antisocial tendencies definition of the implicit assumptions of would persist and develop further—unless early identification and intensive treatment checked by outside intervention. Early programs, and then examine two of the identification in this extrapolative sense is best-known early identification programs in a far cry from identifying potential delin the light of this need. quents according to a theory of delinquency Early identification programs may choose which holds that youngsters exposed to between two theoretically distinct methods certain sociocultural conditions will become of identifying predelinquents. Are predelinquent. Yet the latter is also called __________ identification. For example, Shel jackson toby, Ph.D., is currently associate prodon and Eleanor Glueck claim to be able fessor of sociology at Rutgers University and has to predict delinquency on the basis of fac been for the past two years consultant for the Youth tors distinct from the child's early behavior: Development Program of the Ford Foundation, New York City. His most recent published work, with

Review of Origins of crime: A new evaluation of the Cambridge-Somerville Youth Study.

Review of Origins of crime: A new evaluation of the Cambridge-Somerville Youth Study.

A Follow-up Report on the Cambridge-Somerville Youth Study

The Cambridge-Somerville Youth Study was founded in 1935 with the double purpose of preventing delin quency and providing research in the area of delinquency pre vention. 325 boys were selected to receive preventive treat ment, and a carefully matched group of 325 boys were provided as a control group. The treatment program utilized many of the practices prevalent in welfare work: family guidance, medical and academic assistance, co-ordination of community agencies, and supplementary entertainment for the boys. This article traces into adulthood the lives of 253 of the "treat ment" boys and their 253 matched mates in the control group. Although the boys were counseled for an average of five years, whatever benefits they may have received were not reflected in their criminal rates: As many treated boys as control boys had been convicted of crimes; they had com mitted approximately equal numbers of crimes and did not differ significantly in the ages when such crimes were com mitted. Nevertheless, evidence gleaned from this program suggests that early treatment and intensive contact with the boy may be an effective means toward crime prevention.

An experiment in the prevention of delinquency: The Cambridge-Somerville Youth Study.

An experiment in the prevention of delinquency: The Cambridge-Somerville Youth Study.

A Validation of the Glueck Social Prediction Scale for Proneness to Delinquency

This article is a digest of a thesis presented in the Department of Social Relations of Harvard University for Senior Honors in June, 1952. Mr. Thompson has informed the Editor that there is a copy of the thesis entitled Validating the Glueck Social Table for Predicting Juvenile Delinquency, on file in the Social Relations Library, Harvard University. He has, because of space limitations, been unable to present many tables and more detailed supporting data in this summary presentation. The study is based on cases from the widely discussed Cambridge-Somerville Youth Study which was reported in the book, AN EXPERIMENT IN THE PREVENTION OF DELINQUENCY, by EDWIN POWERS and HELEN WITMER (Columbia University Press, 1951). The writer of the present article carried out this prediction validation study under the direction of Mr. Edwin Powers, who was Visiting Lecturer in Criminology in the Department of Social Relations at Harvard in the academic year 1951-52. Mr. Thompson is now a graduate student at Boston University in the Department of Psychology. He is also engaged in studying another series of boys with a view to checking further the validity of the Glueck Social Prediction Scale as published in UNRAVELING JUVENILE DELINQUENCY (Chapter XX).-EDITOR.

Review of An experiment in the prevention of delinquency: The Cambridge-Somerville Youth Study.

Review of An experiment in the prevention of delinquency: The Cambridge-Somerville Youth Study.

The Cambridge–Somerville youth study.

The Cambridge–Somerville youth study.