N.Y. Youth Board Finds Gluecks' Delinquency Study Highly Accurate

The predictability chart to determine juvenile delinquency potential in children under six years of age compiled by Sheldon and Eleanor Glueck, respectively, Roscoe Pound Professor of Law and research assistant in Criminology, has proven almost 100 per cent accurate, according to a New York Youth Board Survey.

In making public the results of the seven-year study, Mayor Robert F. Wagner hailed the Gluecks' work as of "tremendous significance for the future of delinquency prevention."

The Youth Board studied the entering classes of two Bronx elementary schools with the factors recommended by the Glueck chart and found that the careers of the students agreed exactly with the chart's predictions.

The Gluecks compiled the chart from a study of 1,000 potential delinquents in the Boston area from 1939-50. Five factors developed for the predictions are: affection of the mother for the child, of the father for the child, supervision by the mother, discipline by the father, and the degree of family unity.

In the New York test case, eight of the 223 children studied became definitely delinquent, 13 had been involved in fairly persistent delinquency, and six were showing pre-delinquency signs. At the beginning of the study, the Glueck chart predicted that 186 of the boys had "little probability of becoming delinquents."