Review

Reviewed Work(s): The Jack-Roller: A Delinquent Boy's Own Story. by Clifford R. Shaw
Review by: Kimball Young
Source: American Journal of Sociology, Vol. 36, No. 3 (Nov., 1930), pp. 474-476
Published by: The University of Chicago Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2767286
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BOOK REVIEWS
The Jack-Roller: A Delinquent Boy's Own Story. By CLIFFORD R.

SHAW. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1930. PP. xv+

205. $2.50.
The major portion of this book is taken up with the life-story of a delinquent boy and his final re-orientation to normal social participation. In
the first section, however, Shaw discusses the value of the delinquent's own
life-story, presents the history of Stanley's behavior difficulties, and furnishes us with a picture of his social and cultural background. Autobiographical documents, correlated with the records of social agencies, with

the stories of other participants in the total situation, and with the medical and psychological factors, have great value in indicating the growth of

attitudes and habits. The physical and psychological tests reveal, of

course, in cross-sectional fashion the static facts at a particular time and
place. The genetic-historical autobiography itself shows first the person's
own conception of his role in society and, secondly, it reveals the development of behavior patterns in a long-time sequence. Burgess, who writes a
brilliant analysis of the whole case, defends the use of the autobiography
in preference to many records of social agencies because the latter are so
frequently translations of the interviewer rather than the "language, emotional expressions, and attitudes of the persons interviewed."

The second chapter gives a resume of the history of Stanley's behavior

from his first contact with correctional agencies to his release from the
House of Correction. It traces his school record with implicit indications

of the failure of the school to understand and help him. His vocational

history is especially important since it reveals the difficulties in adjusting

one of Stanley's personality type to a satisfactory job.
The third chapter traces briefly the nature of the community and cul-

tural background out of which Stanley came. In his childhood and youth
he lived in areas marked by high rates of delinquency. In his period of readaptation he lived in a stable neighborhood. The family background is
immigrant with the usual difficulties of adjusting to American standards.

Upon this is superimposed the fact of familiar breakdown because of the

re-marriage of the father, with the ensuing conflict of stepmother and step-

siblings with Stanley and his own siblings. Out of this matrix, in the process of escape, Stanley is inducted into delinquent groups. Beginning as a
474

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BOOK

REVIEWS

475

habitual truant from home and school, he developed into a tough young
criminal whose life from about eight until seventeen years is taken up with
a series of anti-social activities interlarded with incarceration in various
so-called correctional institutions.

Stanley's own story of his life is too rich in detail to attempt to summarize here. Out of it, however, a number of important facts arise. In the
first place one is struck by the interplay of certain temperamental traits
with social and cultural conditioning. Stanley becomes essentially ego-

centric and self-justificatory with marked tendencies to blame all his hard
luck upon externalities. He is resistive of authority and suspicious of his
fellows. The third sentence of his autobiography gives his whole life philosophy at the time in these words, "Fate begins to guide our lives even
before we are born and continues to do so throughout life." Yet the narrative is not occupied entirely with expressions of self-pity. Stanley reveals

all too poignantly the ill effects of our systems of punitive justice. He
shows the influences of interaction with other delinquents and criminals

both in and out of correctional institutions. One is profoundly impressed

with this picture of our social welfare systems at work.

To understand Stanley, however, as Burgess says, we must keep clearly

in mind the differences between "personality pattern" and "social type."
Doubtless Stanley would have developed along the lines of egocentricity

no matter what his cultural environment. His "social type" grew out of
the "attitudes, values, and philosophy" caught up from his contacts with
disintegrating groups. The story of his re-orientation toward conventional
life is for the student of behavior perhaps more significant than the narra-

tion of some of Stanley's exciting escapades. But to quote Burgess again:

"The transformation of Stanley from a criminal to a law-abiding citizen

was a change in social type; his personality pattern remained the same."

To change the latter would involve a much more intimate reconditioning

of the basic attitudes and habits of infancy and childhood.

Doubtless many readers of this book will be much impressed by the

striking narrative of Stanley's experiences. For some it may afford an evening's entertainment; for others it may arouse resentment at the treatment

afforded young delinquents in one of our great commonwealths; for still

others it may seem adequate proof of all that is said about "Gangster"

Chicago and its hoodlums. For the student of human behavior, however,
the interest lies in the amazingly successful combination of research and
analysis with personal therapy. Here we have a case in which the analysis

of the personal and social factors is made the basis upon which the individual is rehabilitated from a life of social disorganization to one of conven-

tionality. There are at hand numerous studies of a descriptive sort reveal-

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476 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

ing the life-courses of criminal, delinquent, and pathological personalities.
But with the exception of this work and that of Healy and Bronner we have

very little, in this country at least, which shows at once that analysis and
treatment of delinquency may be carried on together. This naturally
raises again the problem of the relation of reform to research. It would

seem that improvement in the individual may be brought about much more
rapidly, in spite of much time and attention from agencies and individuals,
than change in the social-cultural codes of immigrant and disintegrated

neighborhoods or improvement in the political and economic order which

make these problems what they are. After all, this is an instance of the reformation of a person by removing him from the causal situation. It is not
the outcome of any modification of the precipitating condition itself. Noth-

ing is done to improve the nature of the life of people residing in the slum
and delinquency areas out of which Stanley came. The major social problem still remains. One asks why no more adequate provision is made for
playgrounds, for socially-approved means of extra-school education, for

all those institutional formulations which would remove the major causes

of such behavior: illness, low standards of living, unemployment, and all

the rest.
The answer to these questions is not the purpose of Shaw's study. His,
recent monograph, Delinquency Areas, does throw light on the ecological

and institutional features of the life which lies behind Stanley. The larger
problem of community reorganization, however, has yet to be undertaken.

When it is made, however, it cannot escape the contributions which this

and other social science studies made in Chicago and elsewhere have to
offer.
KIMBALL YOUNG
UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN

Neighborhood and Community Planning. "Regional Survey," Volume VII, comprising three monographs: "The Neighborhood

Unit," by CLARENCE ARTHUR PERRY; "Sunlight and Daylight

for Urban Areas," by WAYNE D. HEYDECKER in collaboration

with ERNEST P. GOODRICH; "Problems of Planning Unbuilt

Areas," by THOMAS ADAMS, EDWARD M. BASSETT, and ROBERT

WHITTEN. New York: Regional Plan of New York and Its En-

virons, I929. PP. 363. $3.00.

The community movement which apparently reached its peak in the

vears immediatelv following the World War, gives promise of a new lease

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