ABSTRACT
The earliest attempts at scientific explanation of criminality relied on discredited classifications of criminals as throwbacks to an earlier stage of physical evolution. The attitudes of criminologists toward the role of the family in the genesis of criminality, in contrast, have undergone a series of shifts back and forth between ontogenetic and sociogenic paradigms. The ethnographic examples discussed are drawn from H. S. Sullivan's fieldwork over a 10-year period in some low-income neighborhoods of Brooklyn. Ethnographic samples of about a dozen young males were initially recruited in each area. Their ages ranged between 15 and 19 at the time of contact, and these samples were intentionally recruited from among crimirally active youths. The samples were thus not typical of the general population nor even of the populations of the low-income neighborhoods. The chapter explores the continuities and discontinuities in progressions from early childhood antisocial behavior through juvenile delinquency to adult criminality.
