In 1935, Richard Cabot (1868-1939), a renowned physician and professor of clinical medicine and social ethics at Harvard University, founded the Cambridge-Somerville Youth Study. Appalled by high recidivism rates of reformatories of the day, Cabot wanted to do something to help young, underprivileged boys from engaging in delinquency and embarking on a life of crime. Described as character development through positive role models, with similarities to today's mentoring programs, the prevention intervention enrolled 650 boys (later reduced to 506) from Cambridge and Somerville (Mass.) and operated from 1939-45. Over the next 30 years, three major follow-ups would be undertaken, producing a wealth of knowledge on the development and prevention of offending over the life-course. As the earliest randomized controlled trial in criminology, one of the earliest trials of a social intervention, and the longest running trial in the Western world-with the latest follow-up currently tracing participants well into old age-the CSYS is a famous and consequential study in the annals of criminology. But Cabot was not a criminologist. Instead, he worked at the interface of medicine and the social sciences, bringing to bear his important grounding in social ethics and engaging with leading academicians, including Sheldon and Eleanor Glueck and William Healy. In the years to come, Joan McCord-a leading criminologist in her own right-would take over the study and bring it into the modern era. Drawing on extensive archival materials and published works, Between Medicine and Criminology is the first book about the history of the making of the CSYS, as well as what this history holds for modern criminology. It interrogates and describes in fascinating detail the personal, professional, and institutional influences that led Cabot to develop the study; the social and intellectual contexts during the 1920s and 1930s that helped shape the study's novel and rigorous evaluation design; how the operation of the study and changes from the original design may have contributed to its ineffectiveness in preventing delinquency and later offending; and the impacts-and limitations-of this iconic study in the history of criminology.

About the Author
Brandon C. Welsh, Ph.D., is Professor of Criminology at Northeastern University, Co-Director of the Crime Prevention Lab, and the Director of the Cambridge-Somerville Youth Study. His research focuses on the prevention of delinquency, crime, and interpersonal violence and evidence-based social policy. He has written extensively on these topics and is the author or editor of 13 books. He is an elected Fellow of the American Society of Criminology and the Academy of Experimental Criminology and the 2021 recipient of the AEC's Joan McCord Award. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Cambridge. Steven N. Zane, Ph.D., J.D., is an Assistant Professor in the College of Criminology and Criminal Justice at Florida State University. His research interests focus on juvenile justice and evidence-based social policy. He is the author or editor of three books, including The Oxford Handbook of Evidence-Based Crime and Justice Policy (Oxford University Press, 2024), as well as an author of more than 35 scientific journal articles and book chapters. He received his Ph.D. from Northeastern University and his J.D. from Boston College Law School. Scott H. Podolsky, M.D., is Professor of Global Health and Social Medicine at Harvard Medical School and the Director of the Center for the History of Medicine at the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine. He has written extensively on the history of controlled clinical trials, especially in two of his monographs, Pneumonia before Antibiotics: Therapeutic Evolution and Evaluation in Twentieth-Century America (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2006) and The Antibiotic Era: Reform, Resistance, and the Pursuit of a Rational Therapeutics (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2015). He received his M.D. from Harvard Medical School.


Book Information
ISBN 9780197675946
Author Brandon C. Welsh
Format Hardback
Page Count 232
Imprint Oxford University Press Inc
Publisher Oxford University Press Inc
Weight(grams) 431g
Dimensions(mm) 241mm * 168mm * 28mm