Slack Summarizes Delinquency Research

A tape recorder, an empty store front, and about 20 tough local adolescents form the nucleus of a novel University experiment in human behavior. "Street Corner Research," a project headed by Charles W. Slack, assistant professor of Clinical Psychology, has taken over a closed store at the corner of Bow St. and Massachusetts Ave. to study the problem of juvenile delinquency.

Instead of the familiar doctor-patient relationship, Street Corner Research uses an experimenter-subject relationship that "gets information we couldn't possibly obtain by conventional methods." Adolescent subjects are paid for coming in and speaking with members of the experiment; there is no coercion or direct attempt to reform them.

"Our greatest interest is in the absolutely unreachable kids who would never volunteer for such experiments," Dr. Slack noted. The first five adolescents whom Street Corner Research investigated had previously refused to see social workers or psychiatrists appointed by a juvenile court.

Members of the experiment actively seek adolescents in the Boston area and persuade them to come for an interview. "The first time one comes, whether or not he is three hours late, we pay him immediately in cash for coming." The payment of the subjects gives the experiment its unique twist. Street Corner Research does not try directly to reform juvenile delinquents, but treats the adolescents as employees and not as hoodlums.

"Although we don't claim to treat them," Dr. Slack stated, "we get better results than we would by using conventional methods." The project is not set up as a social service agency. Rather, it is a scientific endeavor, aimed at discovering reasons for juvenile delinquency. Research and treatment complement each other; Dr. Slack said, "The kids treat themselves by discussion, and reviewing their own material work."

In both individual and group conferences, the subjects discuss the factors behind delinquency and other topics that lead them toward a clearer understanding of themselves. Boys get into trouble, one subject stated, "because they have no money and no one will give them any money so they go out and steal and so it ends up into trouble and they get put in jail." Another subject noted, "In my short period attending here so far, I have never since I can remember, felt greater mentally."

In the future, the experimenters hope to establish a permanent laboratory in human relations that would become a part of a working-class community. There are no stigmata attached to Street Corner Research, since it has no connection with juvenile courts or social service reform agencies. In its two years of operation, however, Street Corner Research has shown the value of a new approach to juvenile delinquency, one that may be emulated in the rest of the nation.