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

Objectives

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.

Methods

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.

Results

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.

Conclusions

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.

     

Do Criminal Court Outcomes Vary by Juvenile Transfer Mechanism? A Multi-Jurisdictional,Multilevel Analysis

In recent decades, the number of juvenile defendants transferred to criminal court has increased dramatically, in large measure due to an expansion of available transfer mechanisms. While transfer traditionally occurred by judicial waiver of jurisdiction, alternatives have emerged and eclipsed judicial waiver as the primary route to adult court. The present study examines whether the mechanism of waiver—judicial, prosecutorial, or legislative—affects sentencing outcomes for juvenile defendants transferred to adult court. Results from multilevel models that control for state-level variation indicate that sentencing outcomes are inextricably tied to method of transfer. Most notably, non-criminal outcomes are most likely for cases that arrive in criminal court by legislative waiver. This suggests that legislative waiver is an ineffective means of sending juvenile offenders to criminal court, and provides some empirical support for the notion that judicial waiver is the most appropriate method of transfer.     

Urgent issues and prospects in reforming interrogation practices in the United States and Canada

The current article presents a series of commentaries on urgent issues and prospects in reforming interrogation practices in Canada and the United States. Researchers and practitioners, who have devoted much of their careers to the field of police and intelligence interrogations, were asked to provide their insights on an area of interrogation research that they believe requires immediate attention. The submitted independent commentaries covered a variety of topics – from police recruitment, interrogation training, use of proper interrogation practices, and the treatment of confession evidence in court. Common concerns from the contributions pertained to the lag between scientific knowledge on interrogations and the application of such knowledge in the justice system, and the glaring disparity between the treatment of similar issues in the interrogation context versus other criminal justice contexts. A primary intent of this collection of commentaries is to serve as a resource pointing researchers in the direction of the fundamental areas that require immediate consideration and encouraging them to simultaneously pursue solutions to the overarching concerns that emerged from this project.     

Trust and Distrust as Distinct Concepts: Why Studying Distrust in Institutions is Important

Abstract

Scholarship of trust in institutions has tended to see trust and distrust as opposites on one continuum. Theoretical advances have challenged this view and now consider trust and distrust as different constructs, and thus as constructs with different characteristics and partly different determinants. Current empirical research on trust in government has so far done little to incorporate these findings, and has largely continued to rely on traditional survey items assuming a trust–distrust continuum. We rely on the literature in organization studies and political science to argue in favour of measuring citizen trust and distrust as distinct concepts and discuss future research challenges.     

Alliteration in Mate Selection: Does Barbara Still Marry Barry?

More than 30 years ago research found that alliteration is a factor in assortative mating (i.e., marriages). Alliterative matches were even more frequent when using nicknames than when using given names. Subsequently, researchers have confirmed the higher than chance occurrence of alliterative matches for given names. But nicknames have not been examined over the past 30 years. The present research finds support for three hypotheses. As predicted, nicknames are more associated with alliterative matches than are given names. Implications for practice are discussed.     

The discourse of 19th-century French liberal socialism

ABSTRACT

This article analyses late 19th-century French liberal socialist syntheses of liberty and equality, building on the existing body of literature on liberal socialism to illustrate the influence of the non-Marxist left on its development through a focus on the work of the Radical, Célestin Bouglé, and the Socialists, Benoît Malon and Charles Andler. The analysis of these thinkers demonstrates the ideological similarities of liberal socialisms of thinkers hailing from both the non-Marxist left and the new liberalism. A concluding section suggests that liberal socialism offers social democrats and progressive liberals an ideological heritage from which to pose a radical alternative to contemporary forms of neoliberalism.