Delinquency Prevention for Individual Change: Richard Clarke Cabot and the Making of the Cambridge-Somerville Youth Study

• In Event: Historical Studies in American Criminology, 1860-1940

Abstract

Richard Clarke Cabot (1868-1939) was not a criminologist, yet he played a rather notable role in the history of criminology. He funded, designed, and directed one of criminology’s most well-known delinquency prevention programs and the field’s first randomized controlled experiment: the Cambridge-Somerville Youth Study (CSYS). Begun in 1939, the study—highly unique for the time period—“grafted scientific methods onto a social action program” (McCord, 1992: 198). Six hundred fifty under-privileged boys (later reduced to 506), aged 5-13 years (median = 10.5), from Cambridge and Somerville, Massachusetts, were rated as “average” or “difficult” and placed in matched pairs and one member of each pair was randomly assigned to the treatment group. Referred to as “directed friendship,” the preventive intervention involved individual counseling through a range of activities and home visits for an average of five years. While the study is best known through the rich body of research and scholarship of Joan McCord, from the 1950s to the mid-2000s, this paper aims to develop an historical understanding of the making of the study through a focus on Cabot. Drawing on extensive archival records and published works, we find that the CSYS came to fruition through a culmination of personal, professional, and institutional influences, including Cabot’s ideals and pragmatism, some criminological luminaries at Harvard University in the 1920s and 1930s, and a growing concern with the treatment of juvenile offenders in Massachusetts during this period of time. Building on this early history and its lineage to McCord’s scholarship, this paper also explores the study’s legacy for delinquency prevention today.

Authors

• Brandon C. Welsh, Northeastern University and NSCR

• Steven N. Zane, Northeastern University

• Michael Rocque, Bates College