ABSTRACT
Delinquency and crime are really, in part, but phases of the reorganization of cultural norms and the reshaping of personality organization which accompanies the larger process. The most noteworthy shift is from crimes of violence to those of a predatory sort. There is no evidence that a particular type of crime remains attached to a particular nationality or subracial group through succeeding generations, despite Hooton’s contention to the contrary. In contrast, in countries like Soviet Russia, Nazi Germany, or Fascist Italy, political crimes, such as counterrevolutionary activity, rank perhaps at the top or near the top of the list of significance. The commonest of the biological theories is that the criminal somehow represents a special, biologically divergent individual, with structural and functional predispositions to delinquency and crime. The mental conflicts of childhood and adolescence were fertile for the development of a neurosis characterized by criminalistic and other maladjustment in adult life.
