Table of Contents


Acknowledgments deletevi

Preface

Introduction: Boyhood and the Criminological Imagination

One. ­Jack-Roller Stories

Two. Decoding The ­Jack-Roller

Three. Shaw's Other Boys

Four. Exclusions of Convenience

Five. Inclusions of Convenience

Six. Introduction to the Institute for Juvenile Research Oral Histories

The Lone Wolf

The Boy Scout

The Beaver

Conclusion: Delinquency and the End of Boyhood

Bibliography

Index

Roger A. Salerno is a professor of sociology at Pace University in New York and a practicing psychoanalyst.

Developed by progressive social scientists in the early 20th century, the juvenile justice system in the U.S. consisted of courts and corrections aimed at reforming disorderly youth. Poor immigrant boys, roaming the streets unsupervised, were its usual subjects.
Psychologists and sociologists equated maleness with innate insensitivity, lack of self-control and violent tendencies. In the belief that proper discipline would save the troubled boys from "feminization" and help control their destructive impulses, a rigid masculine authority--challenged by women activists--began to be imposed by a reactionary patriarchal system.
This study of delinquency in 1920s Chicago examines the lives of boys, many of whom spent their early years incarcerated, who survived by embracing criminal personas. Predatory masculinity emerges as a source of personal struggle, and as the basis for an array of contemporary social problems, including mass violence and suicide.