A Model Crime Prevention Division
Eleanor Gerard · Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology (1931-1951) · 1944
The Problem of Crime Prevention There is little need to reiterate the vast importance of crime prevention. One has only to glance briefly at the statistics which indicate that young people from fifteen to twenty-one years constitute more than forty percent of the nation's burglars and nearly half of the automobile thieves that nineteen-year olds offend more frequently than persons of any other age to realize the gravity of the problem. Youth is the mainspring of the country's crime situation, and should be the center toward which all crime prevention efforts are directed. Crime prevention activities resolve themselves into two types; one type operates upon the individual directly, and the other seeks to improve the general conditions which are contributory to crime. The importance of simultaneously considering the unadjusted individual and the social community of which he is a product is brought out by the accepted definition of delinquency as a social concept, and the realization that delinquents are products of their successive social