Lloyd E. Ohlin (1918–2008)

Professor David Downes has chosen to discuss Richard Cloward and Lloyd Ohlin’s Delinquency and Opportunity: A Theory of Delinquent Gangs, on FiveBooks as one of the top five on his subject -Crime and Punishment, saying that:



“…If you live in red alert all the time crime falls, but at a heavy cost. This books shows that opportunity is a key variable. You can’t expect to have a lot of unemployed young men living with winner-loser exhortations to get rich and expect things to carry on as normal…The book proved the basis for a major social experiment on the Lower East Side of New York, Mobilisation for Youth, to expand job opportunities for the most disadvantaged. An enormous $12.5 million was invested in the project in the 1960s and it proved an inspiration for much of the War on Poverty under Presidents Kennedy and Johnson. Though criticised as over-schematic, the theory retains great force as an explanatory framework, and lends itself well to cross-national study. That is, when opportunities are made available they are seized. .…”



The full interview is available here: http://fivebooks.com/interviews/david-downes… (mais)