Sheldon Glueck (August 15, 1896 – March 10, 1980) was a

Polish-American Polish Americans ( pl, Polonia amerykańska) are Americans who either have total or partial Polish ancestry, or are citizens of the Republic of Poland. There are an estimated 9.15 million self-identified Polish Americans, representing about 2.83% ...

criminologist Criminology (from Latin , "accusation", and Ancient Greek , ''-logia'', from λόγος ''logos'' meaning: "word, reason") is the study of crime and deviant behaviour. Criminology is an interdisciplinary field in both the behavioural and s ...

.Staff report (March 13, 1980)
Sheldon Glueck of Harvard Dies; Studied the Roots of Delinquency.
''

New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...

'' He and his wife Eleanor Glueck collaborated extensively on research related to

juvenile delinquency Juvenile delinquency, also known as juvenile offending, is the act of participating in unlawful behavior as a minor or individual younger than the statutory age of majority. In the United States of America, a juvenile delinquent is a person ...

and developed the "Social Prediction Tables" model for predicting the likelihood of delinquent behavior in youth. They were the first criminologists to perform studies of chronic juvenile offenders and among the first to examine the effects of

psychopathy Psychopathy, sometimes considered synonymous with sociopathy, is characterized by persistent antisocial behavior, impaired empathy and remorse, and bold, disinhibited, and egotistical traits. Different conceptions of psychopathy have been ...

among the more serious delinquents.Staff report (September 26, 1972)
Eleanor Glueck, expert on crime; Writer on delinquency with her husband dead at 74.
''

Early life

Born in

Warsaw Warsaw ( pl, Warszawa, ), officially the Capital City of Warsaw,, abbreviation: ''m.st. Warszawa'' is the capital and largest city of Poland. The metropolis stands on the River Vistula in east-central Poland, and its population is official ...

Poland Poland, officially the Republic of Poland, , is a country in Central Europe. Poland is divided into Voivodeships of Poland, sixteen voivodeships and is the fifth most populous member state of the European Union (EU), with over 38 mill ...

during the

Russian Empire The Russian Empire was an empire and the final period of the List of Russian monarchs, Russian monarchy from 1721 to 1917, ruling across large parts of Eurasia. It succeeded the Tsardom of Russia following the Treaty of Nystad, which ended th ...

, he became a naturalized citizen of the United States in 1920. He received his PhD from

Harvard University Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of high ...

in 1924 and taught there from 1925 to 1963.

Career

Glueck's brother Bernard Glueck, Sr. introduced him to his future wife Eleanor, then employed by Bernard. Eleanor and Sheldon Glueck embarked upon an internationally recognized partnership in criminology that would last the remainder of their lives. Their landmark studies of inmates at the

Massachusetts Reformatory Massachusetts (Massachusett: ''Muhsachuweesut Massachusett_writing_systems.html" ;"title="nowiki/> məhswatʃəwiːsət.html" ;"title="Massachusett writing systems">məhswatʃəwiːsət">Massachusett writing systems">məhswatʃəwiːsət'' En ...

examined the efficacy of the penal system and

recidivism Recidivism (; from ''recidive'' and ''ism'', from Latin ''recidīvus'' "recurring", from ''re-'' "back" and ''cadō'' "I fall") is the act of a person repeating an undesirable behavior after they have experienced negative consequences of th ...

rates. In their controversial 1950 work ''Unraveling Juvenile Delinquency'' the two claimed that potential deviants could be identified by as young as six years of age. They would collaborate on more than 250 publications, beginning with ''Five Hundred Criminal Careers'' (1930), followed by ''Five Hundred Delinquent Women'' (1934) and ''One Thousand Juvenile Delinquents'' (1934). For the juvenile delinquents, they made attempts to predict criminality using statistics, followed by the likelihood of their rehabilitation upon release. They were the first criminologists to perform studies of chronic juvenile offenders and among the first to examine the effects of

among the more serious delinquents. Their studies showed that psychopathy was 20 times more common among juvenile delinquents. In 1940, they began a ten-year

longitudinal study A longitudinal study (or longitudinal survey, or panel study) is a research design that involves repeated observations of the same variables (e.g., people) over short or long periods of time (i.e., uses longitudinal data). It is often a type of ...

that was published as ''Unraveling Juvenile Delinquency'' (1950). This resulted in the Gluecks' "Social Prediction Tables" that gave predictions of the likelihood of juvenile delinquency based upon parameters from when the youths were six years old. During the aftermath of the

Holocaust The Holocaust, also known as the Shoah, was the genocide of European Jews during World War II. Between 1941 and 1945, Nazi Germany and its collaborators systematically murdered some six million Jews across German-occupied Europe; ...

he was one of the leading advocates for the creation of an international criminal court to punish crimes against humanity.

Death

Glueck died in

Cambridge, Massachusetts Cambridge ( ) is a city in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States. As part of the Greater Boston, Boston metropolitan area, the cities population of the 2020 United States Census, 2020 U.S. census was 118,403, making it the fourth most ...

Literary works

* ''500 Criminal Careers'' (1930) * ''War Criminals: Their Prosecution and Punishment'' (1944) * ''Unraveling Juvenile Delinquency'' (1950) * ''Identification of Predelinquents'' (1972)

References

External links

*
Finding aid for Eleanor T. and Sheldon Glueck , Papers 1911-1972
Harvard Law School Library. {{DEFAULTSORT:Glueck, Sheldon American criminologists 1896 births 1980 deaths Emigrants from Congress Poland to the United States Harvard University alumni Harvard University faculty