Kids, Crime and Chaos [antikvár]

FOREWORD HOW THE BOOK CAME TO BE WRITTEN "We need another book on juvenile delinquency like a hole in the headi" This was the greeting hurled at me when I went to interview a Philadelphia commissioner in preparation for this book. It was not the first such comment I'd received, nor—as things turned out—the last. And although this sort of thing might discourage some people, it didn't discourage me. In fact, I agreed with it. The commissioner, I knew, is typical of many people working in the field. For more than a decade now, books on juvenile delinquency have been ground out of the presses like sausages—and are just about as digestible. Why, then, another "sausage"? My reason is snobbery—in reverse. Most books on the subject—in fact, just about all of them—are written by experts. I am not. The idea of a book by a nonexpert—a layman—is more or less novel. But why not? I asked myself. In the last analysis, it's the layman who produces, nourishes and pays the final bill for the delinquent prod-