ABSTRACT

Begun in 1939, the Cambridge-Somerville Youth Study is a delinquency prevention experiment embedded in a prospective longitudinal survey of the development of offending of 506 under-privileged boys (median = 10.5 years) from Cambridge and Somerville, Massachusetts. Referred to as “directed friendship,” the preventive intervention involved individual counseling through a range of activities and home visits. Our objectives here are as follows: (1) report on key findings of Joan McCord’s investigations of the intergenerational transmission of offending based on the treatment group participants (G2) and their fathers (G1) and (2) describe the planning involved for extending this research to the children of the treatment group participants (G3). The treatment group fathers (N = 229) were born between 1872 and 1913 (mean = 1896) and became fathers of the treatment group boys at ages 26 to 67 years (mean = 43). Detailed family records were collected between 1939 and 1945, and official convictions for the fathers were last collected in 1948. The treatment group boys (N = 253) were born between 1925 and 1934 (mean = 1928). At the last follow-up (1975–1979), McCord was successful in locating 98 per cent of the treatment group (N = 248), and information was collected for offending (convictions), death, employment, and alcohol use. For G3, planned data collection involves official records of offending (convictions) and death. The CSYS has produced an important body of knowledge on the transmission of criminal offending between two generations (G1 to G2). The addition of G3 will allow for a more comprehensive and developmentally appropriate investigation of intergenerational transmission of criminal offending.