Renn's article discusses Bowlby's original paper describing the character and home life of forty-four juvenile thieves. He demonstrates the ongoing relevance of Bowlby's early thinking, linking this to a contemporary understanding of criminal behaviour. His paper emphasizes the especial usefulness of Bowlby's diagnosis of the Affectionless Character. Renn provides a detailed case assessment of two adult offenders from his work in the probation service, locating their violence in traumatic early experiences of separation, loss, and abuse in a disorganized caregiving-attachment family system. Citing his long experience in working with offenders in a probation setting, he concludes that most serious incidents occur in a context of relationship problems involving loss, rejection, and abandonment, seeing these factors as activating early unresolved trauma and a dissociated internal working model of disorganized attachment.