“We’re Blocking Youth’s Path to Crime”

Abstract

Everywhere Americans turned in the early 1930s, they heard alarming reports about the “crime wave” sweeping the country. Much of the blame for the crisis fell on teenage boys. In response, civic leaders in hundreds of U.S. cities formed crime prevention groups that sought to slash the rate of juvenile delinquency. The Los Angeles Coordinating Councils (LACC), the largest and best-known of these groups, pioneered the community approach to crime control, which entailed extensive experiments in social engineering. Because it championed social work and environmental explanations of criminal behavior, the community approach differed sharply from the contemporaneous federal “war on crime.” During the 1940s, the LACC suffered a series of blows, including a significant loss of funding. Nevertheless, the LACC and the community approach represent a cohesive attempt by middle-class urban Americans during the Great Depression to create a safe and meaningful civic life.