Group Sentiment and Delinquency
- Author:
HOWARD JONES, B.Sc.(Econ.), DPA
Psychiatric Social Worker, Monyhull Residential Special School, Birmingham Principles
It is only neglect of the factor of group sentiment which has prevented investigators from recognizing that the young offender is, often enough, ultra-social rather than antisocial. The point has been well made by Mark Benney in his autobiography: ” Any study of a criminal must first decide what is meant by the term crime.
I, for example, have been, am still a criminal. But there is a sense in which I have been an almost abjectly law-abiding person. From my very first years I adapted myself wholeheartedly to the community I lived in, accepting its values, obeying its imperatives, observing its customs. Submissiveness could go no further. If, then, law-abidingness is acting according to the dictates of the community you were born into, there never was a more law-abiding person than myself.
” But, unfortunately or otherwise, the community I was born into was a small one at variance with the larger community containing it. In obeying the laws of the criminal quarter, I incurred the disapproval of the law courts. “(1)
This neglected sociological factor is obviously of the greatest importance for any proper understanding of delinquency.
That crime is greater in some districts than in others has been frequently brought out in local investigations^), and in accounting for this, social workers who have acquired an intimate understanding of the local life generally lay much stress upon the lower moral tone in the high crime-rate districts. This does not mean that many of these communities are, like that described by Benney, actively criminal. Rather is there a general laxity of morals, issuing in greater tolerance of crime and criminality, and in a tendency, for example, to scorn as a ” mug ” the man who, being given change for ?1 instead of 10�s. at the ” local decides that he ought to return the excess.
Yet when a child gets into trouble with the police no real attempt is made to deal with this vital problem of the local community. His parents are interviewed and are expected to raise their standards, but entirely without reference to the standards of the district in which they live. No one seems to realize how impossible it is for any person with a normal share of social sensibility to swim against the stream of public opinion in this way. What a good augury for the future that in spite of all the persuasiveness of the probation officer and all the threats of the courts, the parents remain unreformed ! Their sensitivity to the views of their fellows will ensure that they are equally resolute in the support of law and order, if only, by the dissemination of social insight, law and order can be made the ideal of the local community.
There is another type of group sentiment to be considered also: that of the local juvenile community?the gang. In one prewar investigation(3) it was discovered that 71-6%, of all crimes by boys in the London area were gang offences, and 74%, in six typical provincial towns. The writers conclude:
” It is obvious that the majority of offences are committed when boys are in company”.
Some doubt has been cast upon this conclusion by one of the contributors to the book, in a more recent but much more restricted study, (4) but even if the proportion is a little lower, it must be remembered that the influence of the gang is not limited to those crimes actually committed in groups. Many lone offences are committed by gang members in order to give them prestige with their comrades, and the general influence of the group is towards lower standards of responsibility and honesty in personal life.
There is a fairly general recognition of the influence which the gang exerts upon its members. But it does not seem ever to have been realized that this very obedience of the youthful gangster to the mores of his juvenile community is proof of his essential sociality. The general undervaluation of the group factor is probably due to the tendency of writers in recent years to concentrate upon the psychopathology of the individual delinquent. As a result there is a widespread impression that behind every delinquent act there lies a severe psychological conflict. It is not appreciated that, perhaps in most cases, the emotional conflicts of the delinquent lie within normal limits, and that the pressure of group opinion has been the decisive factor. This view receives. powerful support from a careful clinical investigation of 803 delinquent boys and girls, conducted by the School Medical Officer of the LCC in 1930. His report(5) points out: ” In less than 2%, of these cases did there appear to be a deeper psychological reaction calling for investigation.
“Nor does the classical work of Healy and Bronner (6) controvert this, for they studied only “
potentially serious offenders who might be expected to be more seriously disturbed than the general run of disorderly scamps.
Healy and Bronner have given, in the same book, a convincing account of the important part which group sentiment plays in the aetiology of delinquent activity, even in gravely disturbed children. Being prevented by circumstances from securing normal satisfaction from personal relationships, these children seek substitutive satisfactions. Though this in itself need not lead to delinquent behaviour, the substitutes found are in fact delinquencies, and this is due to the ideas current in their environment as to the permissible or customary modes of behaviour. Nevertheless, there still remains a small residuum of cases in which the group factor appears to be of little importance. These would include Bowlby’s ” affectionless thieves ” whose social sense seems to be undeveloped (7) and also the psychotic, with their imperfect understanding of reality.
Therapy
Most of the proposals put forward for dealing with the gang come to much the same thing, and might be quite well expressed in the words of Professor Cyril Burt: “banish the ring-leader and break up the group “.(8) The gang is not recognized for what it really is, a wholesome, and, to some extent, inevitable manifestation of the urge towards community. As a result the real need, to give the gang a socially valuable function, is not appreciated, while the efforts of well-meaning probation officers and social workers are dissipated upon the hopeless task of trying to prevent young people from associating. Why have gangs, which are essentially social phenomena, become such antisocial forces? What is this process which now has to be reversed? One must, of course, bear in mind the well-known fact that membership of a group tends to weaken the higher faculties of judgement and reason, and makes possible outbursts of uninhibited emotion. This is the explanation of outbreaks of mob hysteria and violence. Nevertheless, very few even of those offences actually committed by delinquents, when in company, are of this sort. The influence of the occasional, severely disturbed or truly criminal member upon the ideals of the gang must also be considered.
He may be the gang-leader. More often he seems to be an adept at ” making bullets for other people to fire Such an individual is a focus of infection, and susceptible only to highly skilled psychological handling?which he should receive. And his removal from the gang seems to be a precondition for successful therapeutic work with the group itself. Part of the solution is probably to be found in the fact that most gang members are in the pre-adolescent age-group. In his study of delinquency in Liverpool, JH Bagot(9) found that 63%, of the offences committed by boys aged 8-13 were gang offences, and only 40%, of those committed by boys aged 14-16. It is unfortunately true that modern urban life does not provide nearly enough scope for the spirit of adventure and the, abounding energy of the younger group of children. There are few open spaces, and such as exist are often enough only available for polite summer evening perambulations, or ” properly organized ” cricket and football matches. Where is the opportunity for adventure in a society which treats tree-climbing, playing in bombed buildings, or riding ” two on a bike ” as delinquencies ? Unless it is in being a delinquent. There is clearly a task here for the youth leader, but clubs of the orthodox sort seem unlikely to serve the purpose. They are too orderly and disciplined.* It is necessary for the youth leader to capture the loyalty of these gangs, to seek to understand the needs which their delinquent activities subserve, and by treating the gang as a ready-made club, make it possible for those needs to be met in a socially valuable way. An outstanding piece of youth work along these lines was carried out by an American, W. R. George, who actually transformed his gang of young desperadoes into a posse of police auxiliaries. In tracking down criminals they found the thrills and the opportunity for comradeship and common achievement which they had sought formerly in antisocial behaviour.(lO) The Junk Playground Movement sponsored by the National Underfourteens Association^ 1) indicates another angle of approach to this problem.
Gangs seem to be of rather less importance among adolescent delinquents, but where they exist, the experience of the writer has been that here too delinquent behaviour was often indulged in because of the excitement it brought. It is noteworthy that George’s ” law and order gang ” consisted of adolescents. But whatever the motive for delinquency, the keywords in the treatment of these older children, as in that of the younger, should be ” diagnosis ” and ” sublimation There is one difference, that as the older are more able to achieve some insight into their real motives and into the social consequences of their behaviour, group discussions, of the type suggested below for the adult community, should also have a place. The real education of the personality would thus become possible and the development of enlightened individuality promoted, as a healthy corrective to a herd tendency which has its own dangers.
Low parental standards play their part in determining the ideals of the gang, and, of course, of the individual delinquent also. It has already been suggested that this should be tackled by endeavouring to raise the moral tone of the neighbourhood.
The discussion of urgent local problems, including delinquency, should be encouraged among neighbourhood groups of adults. As a result there would soon be achieved a collective appreciation of the loss and inconvenience caused by them, and an attempt to find a collective solution would inevitably follow. The leader of such a group must beware of doing the group’s work for it, for only if the members discover the truth for themselves will they be really convinced. The leader’s function is therefore not a didactic one, but rather that of a tactful chairman, guiding the discussion, discouraging irrelevancies, and ensuring that the discussion is animated throughout by a generally felt sense of a real social situation to be coped with rather than by a mere desire for intellectual exercise. Wherever people meet they discuss such topics with great interest, but because there is no leader, with his eye on the objective all the time, they lose their way, and the discussions peter out quite aimlessly. The spontaneous groupings in the neighbourhood?for example, “over the garden wall unnecks
This undoubtedly accounts for the failure of youth clubs to appeal to the rougher and the delinquent elements in juvenile population, and enable the less discerning of our youth workers to stigmatize these young people falselyas “-clubable * A new youth club opened during the war in a slum district of Birmingham enrolled many young rougn.^ks ” during its early pioneering months, but as the members became orderly and law-abiding, and the? club> sett ea down into routine and respectability, the flow of new members ceased. (See Youth in a City , oar j Pamphlet No. 117, 1943.) 44 MENTAL HEALTH friendships women who wait in the same fish queue, clients of the local pub.?may be utilized. The growth of social insight within these units will soon lead to integration between them, and the development of a real and informed local opinion on things that matter.
REFERENCES
Benney, Mark. Low Company, p. 1. 1936.
Bagot, J. H. “Juvenile Delinquency: a comparative study of the position in Liverpool and in England and Wales.” 1941.
Carr Saunders, Mannheim and Rhodes. ” Young Offenders.” 1942.
Mannheim, H. “Juvenile Delinquency in an English Middletown.” 1948.
L.C.C. Publications, Vol. Ill (Part II). 1930.
Healy and Bronner. ” New Light on Delinquency.” 1936.
Bowlby, J. ” Forty-four Juvenile Thieves.” 1946.
Burt, Cyril. ” The Young Delinquent.” 1925.
Ibid., p. 59.
George, W. R., and Stowe, L. B. ” Citizens Made and Remade”. 1913.
(11) National Under-Fourteens Association, Mary Ward Settlement, W.C.I. …
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