Revisiting Roxbury: Crime, Gang Networks and the Life Course

Session Submission Type: Complete Thematic Panel

Abstract

Walter Miller’s Boston Special Youth Project (1954-1957) embedded outreach workers with youth gangs in an attempt to redirect them towards pro-social activities. The effort was multi-faceted, including community outreach and identification of control group gangs, and data collection was intense, encompassing criminal behavior and day-to-day internal interactions. While this project resulted in Miller’s signature work—“Lower Class Culture as a Generating Milieu of Gang Delinquency” in 1958, a comprehensive book-length treatment languished with the original study documents for decades until rediscovered among Miller’s possessions after his death. In this panel we detail our efforts to reconstruct, extend and re-analyze these data.

Sub Unit

• Area III: Perspectives on Crime and Criminal Behavior / 6: Developmental and Life Course Perspectives

Individual Presentations

• The Legacy of Walter Miller and the Boston Special Youth Project - Scott Decker, Arizona State University; Richard K. Moule, Jr., University of South Florida

• Constructing Social Networks from the Boston Special Youth Project Data - Jacob T.N. Young, Arizona State University

• Patterns and Predictors of Life-Course Offending from Ages 8 to 70 among 1950s Gang Members - Gary Sweeten, Arizona State University; Jacob T.N. Young, Arizona State University

Chair

• Gary Sweeten, Arizona State University

Discussant

• Jean McGloin, University of Maryland