You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
Nearly 200 London cases of juvenile delinquency, and, as a control-series, 400 normal cases, were individually investigated in parallel inquiries; and the various adverse conditions, discoverable in their family history, in their social environment, and in their physical, intellectual, and temperamental status, were ascertained and tabulated for each group. The tables show a lengthy list of contributory causes. Delinquency in the young seems assignable, generally to a wide variety, and usually to a plurality, of converging factors; so that the juvenile criminal is far from constituting a homogeneous psychological class.
To attribute crime in general to either a predominantly hereditary or a predominantly environmental origin appears impossible; in one individual the former type of factor may be paramount; in another, the latter; while, with a large assortment of cases, both seem, on an average and in the long run, to be of almost equal weight. Heredity appears to operate, not directly through the transmission of a criminal disposition as such, but rather indirectly, through such congenital conditions as dullness,