socioeconomic aspects ofthedelinquency rate inimperial germany, 1882-1914

SOCIOECONOMIC ASPECTS OFTHEDELINQUENCY RATEINIMPERIAL GERMANY, 1882-1914*

Introduction

Contemporary sociological research on crime and delinquency has generatedseveral important propositions and generalizations about these phenomena atthe collective level. Ecological studies in particular have stressed the hypothesisthat collective patterns of delinquency in society are strongly related tosocioeconomic variables, and these findings in turn have given rise to a numberof theoretical arguments purportin~ to explain the sociological dynamicsunderlying the observed covariations. Socioeconomic arguments have stressedthe role of personal want and hardship, as well as adverse economic conditionsas the major set of explanatory variables accounting for high delinquencyrates.2 Another category of arguments has placed the major emphasis onconditions of individual and social malaise, such as anomie and familydisorganization, as the primary causes of delinquency in society.' Thesecategories are by no means mutually exclusive, but they do differ considerablyin the types of variables selected for causal emphasis.

Common to both arguments is the conventional wisdom that urban-industrialdevelopment has been an important structural factor positively associated withhigher levels of crime and delinquency. Indeed, the notion that crime andespecially juvenile crime is a by-product of the urban condition has become avirtual cornerstone of modern criminological theory .'t "The strongesttemptation of the ordinary juvenile is the impulse to steal; in the towns, thisimpulse is stimulated in every street by interminable lines of shops andwarehouses exhibiting all kinds of merchandise in a half-protected state,"explained William D. Morrison in 1896.5 Criminologist Walter Reckless echoeda similar view in 1940: "There is abundant evidence to show that crime ratesare much higher in urban than in rural communities and that they tend toincrease as they are graded on a scale of increasing size of population.t'" Notonly does this view apply to historical thinking about crime in the industriallyadvanced countries of North America and Western Europe, but it is alsoassumed to hold true for the developing nations of contemporary Africa, Asiaand Latin America. In a recent study of crime in Uganda in which MarshalClinard and Daniel Abbott attempted to build cross-cultural theory, the authorsbegin with the assumption that "crime rates vary with city size.,,7

Joseph Hawes8 aptly explains the reasoning behind the positive city-crimerelationship in his study of delinquency in 19th-century America. According to

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Hawes, delinquency was by its nature an emergent urban problem since theurban environment offered greatly increased opportunities for delinquentbehavior. Delinquency was also stimulated by the disruption of family lifecommon to the urban areas as well as the varied pressures and rigors of urbanexistence. Hawes also notes that juvenile misbehavior was less likely to betolerated by public authorities in the cities, whereas rural dwellers generallyaccepted the problems presented by youthful offenders with a "boys will beboys" attitude.

Despite this compelling line of argument, we believe that the criminogeniceffects of urbanism and industrial development - at least in the historicalexperience of Western nations - are by no means clearly established by asufficient body of empirical evidence," Few scholars have taken a long termview of the problem. Of those who have, there are at least some who seriouslyquestion if crime and delinquency are actually more prevalent today than theywere before the industrial revolution and the rise of mass urban centers of thepast century and a half.!" For exam~le, in an historical study of youth inGermany and England, John R. Gillis l argues against the obvious conclusionthat youth became more prone to crime in European society at the turn of thecentury. Instead he attributes the rise in delinquency rates to the increasedvigilance of public authorities and to the great concern of adults, and not to anyreal growth in juvenile misconduct. According to Gillis: "'When one lookscarefully at the 'crimes' for which those under 19 were being arrested, onefinds that it was probably the broadening definition of 'delinquency' ratherthan the greater disposition to crime that was the cause of the increase."l2Certainly there are many historical studies which document high rates of crimeand delinquency in certain cities in certain states at certain times. D But mostscholarly efforts dealing with the historical dynamics of crime and delinquencyhave not relied on an extensive and reliable data base over any length of time,nor have they adequately utilized rigorous methods of empirical analysis toverify their conclusions. 14

Characteristically, empirically-minded scholars have tended to focus theirresearch only on relatively short time spans yet have claimed generalapplicability for their findings. Thus Abdul Qaiyum Lodhi and Charles Tillyl,'}maintain that "urbanity" was the principal determinant of property crime in19th-century France, but their studi' only considers correlations for a ten-yearperiod, 1841-1851. Howard Zehr's () findings for France and Germany arepartially supportive of this view but are based upon comparable data for aneven more abbreviated time span. Our own previous study of adult crime in late19th-century Germany suggested the necessity of taking a longer, cross-culturalview, even within the same political system, for it is entirely possible thatcriminal behavior and urbanity may vary positively during one historicalperiod and not at all during another.F In terms of a larger theoreticalperspective, urban-industrial development measured at too high a level ofaggregation may prove to have only limited explanatory cafability with respectto patterns of crime and delinquency in Western societies. I

An historical examination of the behavior of delinquency rates in the contextof 19th-century Europe is of particular importance to the social historianconcerned with the societal effects of the industrial revolution. The intuitive

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SOCIOECONOMIC ASPECTS 386

notion voiced by many historians dealing with this period argues that themagnitude of socioeconomic change accompanying urban-industrialdevelopment was the single most important factor contributing to higher levelsof social deviance and political dissent in 19th-century Europe. In this study,we will focus our analysis on cross-temporal and cross-secticnal variations injuvenile crime in Germany for the years between 1882 and 1914. We haveselected this time period primarily because of the high degree of structuralchange which occurred in German society at this time.!" and secondarilybecause of the availabilitl< of reliable socioeconomic information forcomparable units of analysis: 0 Our study is guided by the following objectives:first, to assess the relationship between urban-industrial development andregional variations in delinquency rates during a period of intense growth; andsecond, to clarify the effects of economic hardship, social malaise anddifferentials in the opportunity structure on regional patterns of delinquentbehavior. It is our position that structural features of society, such as urbanityor the level of industrial development are less satisfying theoretically asexplanatory factors associated with crime and delinquency than other moredirectly-related socioeconomic conditions such as hardship or differentials inopportunity and social access. We will argue that the linkages betweendelinquency rates and urban-industrial development in 19th-century Germanywere largely indirect, and fluctuated over time. Our hypothesis states thaturban-industrial development only takes on theoretical importance withrespect to crime and delinquency when it is treated simultaneously with othersocioeconomic factors.

The data employed in this study have been derived from officially recordedinformation published by the Imperial German and Prussian StatisticalBureaus. Crime rates 21 have been obtained from the annual volumes ofKriminalstatistik of the Statistik des Deutschen Reichs, whereas socioeconomicdata were gleaned primarily from the series, Jahrbuch fur die amtlicheStatistik des Preussischen Staates.22 Although we will consider some crosstemporal data for all of Imperial Germany, the primary units of analysis are the36 administrative districts (Regierungsbezirke) of Prussia. We havedeliberately chosen not to utilize data for all the administrative districts ofImperial Germany for several reasons. First, although the various Germanstates operated under a common legal code at this time, they appeared to haveemployed slightly different reporting procedures and administrative practicesmaking district-level comparisons less meaningful. Second, it was much easierto assemble a large body of social and developmental indicators withoutdistortion for the Prussian districts than it was for the entire German Reich.Finally, Prussia can be considered a microcosm of German society at this time.It represented approximately two-thirds of the German State, with roughly thesame distribution of highly developed and less or moderately developed areasas the rest of Germany. The results obtained from the Prussian data should beapplicable to Germany as a whole.

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Table 1ANNUAL DELINQUENCY RATEFORTHE GERMAN REICH

(1882-1913)*

OverallYear Rate Males Females

1882 568 901 2351883 549 870 2281884 578 921 2351885 559 898 2211886 565 915 2161887 575 933 2191888 563 909 2171889 614 996 2321890 663 1082 2431891 671 1093 2441892 729 1197 2601893 685 1127 2431894 716 1189 2431895 702 1158 2441896 701 1169 2331897 702 1154 2481898 744 1242 2441899 733 1226 2371900 745 1249 2401901 739 1235 2421902 740 1235 2421903 726 1216 2341904 715 1193 2351905 733 1235 2281906 764 1293 2331907 728 1233 2211908 727 1225 2281909 652 1096 2061910 668 1122 2121911 638 1066 2091912 683 1154 2091913 662 1123 199

*Based upon the total number of convictions per 100,000 minors (12-18 years).

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Tahle2AVERAGE DELINQUENCY RATES AND URBANITY LEVELS

FORTHE PRUSSIAN ADMINISTRATIVE DISTRICTS, 1833-1913*

Average Rates Urban LevelsDistrict 1883-87 1898-02 1911-13 1885 1900

1. Konigsberg 661 792 613 13% 34%2. Gumbinnen 675 722 649 0 183. Danzig 1098 992 814 26 384. Marienwerder 759 825 739 0 265. Berlin 803 1084 812 100 1006. Potsdam 849 768 593 13 487. Frankfurt 481 585 575 10 418. Stettin 473 866 590 14 499. Koslin 406 407 434 0 29

10. Stralsund 317 756 579 14 44ll. Posen 797 790 669 6 3212. Bromberg 1009 994 813 6 3313. Breslau 629 734 625 19 4214. Liegnitz 419 559 537 10 3515. Oppeln 768 950 854 4 2516. Magdeburg 473 842 580 20 5017. Merseberg 560 775 577 8 4418. Erfurt 528 637 519 27 4819. Schleswig 351 444 429 18 4320. Hannover 482 730 599 34 5621. Hildesheim 508 566 496 6 3922. Liineberg 406 574 598 0 2923. Stade 403 537 573 0 2324. Osnabruck 271 295 290 12 2925. Aurich 336 342 490 0 2926. Miinster 232 463 638 9 3227. Minden 219 273 287 7 3328. Arnsberg 406 672 665 13 3029. Kassel 489 485 396 8 3530. Wiesbaden 504 630 570 27 5331. Koblenz 368 468 411 5 2432. Diisseldorf 396 691 683 36 6233. Koln 351 778 695 26 5534. Trier 304 576 626 6 1935. Aachen 281 465 445 18 3936. Sigmaringen 228 303 261 0 13

*Based upon average rates for the total number of convictions per 100,000 minors 02-18 years).population living in cities of 25,000 or more for the years listed.

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Cross-Temporal Patterns in Delinquency

Examining Tables I and 2~ we note that the delinquency rate for Germany asa whole and across the Prussian districts generally increased between 1882 and1913~ reaching a peak shortly after the turn of the century and then taperingoff somewhat prior to the outbreak of World War I. The largest increaseoccurred between 1888 and 1892~ which was a period of economic depression inGermany. However ~ even after this temporary downturn in the economy ~ thedelinquency rate never returns to the comparatively low levels of the 1880~s~

but continues to increase and stabilize at a much higher level. We also observeda strong correlation (r = +.85) between delinquency and the adult crime rateduring this period. 23 If we collapse delinquency rates with Prussia into sixtemporal groupings and examine within group averages over time (see Table3)~ it appears that not only has delinquency tended to increase, but districtconviction rates have also become more uniform across the Prussian surface asindicated by a shrinking standard deviation.

Table 3AVERAGE DELINQUENCYRATES IN PRUSSIA, 1883-1912*

(N = 36 administrative districts)

Period

1883-18871888-18921893-18971898-19021903-19071908-1912

AverageDelinquency Rate

496.7556.6634.3649.2654.3587.4

Standard Deviation

210.7209.1209.5207.3181.8152.4

*Based upon average rates for the total number of convictions per 100.000 minors (I2-18 years)across 36 administrative districts.

Since these were years of rapid urban growth marked by the diffusion ofindustrial activity throughout Germany ~ one is tempted to conclude that the risein delinquency convictions was an obvious consequence of higher levels ofurban-industrial development. However, there are problems with thisinterpretation if one considers relationships at the district level. Thedistribution of delinquency rates presented in Table 2 demonstrates thatoftentimes some of the less developed areas in Prussia consistently producedsome of the highest rates of youthful misbehavior, and that some of the morehighly urbanized areas continually had low levels of delinquency. Primeexamples of less urbanized districts with comparatively high delinquency levelsfor the entire period are Cumbinnen, Marienwerder and Oppeln, all located ineastern Prussia. In the period from 1883 to 1887 the urban level of the averagePrussian district was 14.3~ and the average rate of juveniles convicted yearlystood at 497 per 100~000. At this time, however, Cumbinnen, Marienwerderand Oppeln had almost no urban inhabitants, yet their delinquency rates

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greatly exceeded the average (Gumbinnen, 675; Marienwerder, 759; Oppeln,768). And in the period from 1898 to 1902, when the average urban level was38.3 and the average delinquency rate was 649, the percent of urbaninhabitants in these districts remained low (18, 26, 25) but again theirdelinquency rates remained exceptionally high (722,825,950). Although theseare extreme examples, they are not the only cases which can be produced to castdoubt on the urban-industrial thesis. In western Prussia, Trier (only 19 percentby 1900) recorded higher than average delinquency rates (e.g., in the period1911-1913, Trier's rate was 626 against the Prussian average of 576). And todemonstrate that youths in more urbanized districts were often relatively lawabiding, we can cite the examples of Erfurt and Schleswig. Although they werealready 48 and 43 percent urban respectively by 1900, their delinquincy rateswere lower than average then and in subsequent years.

John 1. Tobias is among those who have argued that the industrial system inlate 19th-century Europe was indeed a contributing factor to higher levels ofdelinquent behavior. Tobias maintains that juveniles were more affected bydownturns in the economy than adults at this time, and delinquency appearedto increase during bad times because there was little demand for juvenilelabor. 2'l In our previous study of crime in Germany, we did note a closecorrespondence between rising prices and rising criminality, especially aroundthe years of the Great Depression. Table 4 indicates that German youth weresimilarly affected. The magnitude of the correlations reveals that convictionsfor at least one type of juvenile crime - petty theft - were positivelyassociated with fluctuations in bread prices in this period (allowing for a oneyear lag).25 Similar to the adult crime rate also is the fact that changingeconomic circumstances tended to have a greater influence on the rate of firsttime offenders than on recidivists?' However, the rate of violent crime amongboth juveniles and adults remained virtually unaffected by these price changes.

Table 4FLUCTUATIONS IN GRAIN PRICES AND

DELINQUENCY RATES IN GERMANY, 1882-1900*

Annual Price LevelsI

Rye (1882-1900)VVheat(1886-1900)

Annual Price LevelsI

Rye (1882-1900)VVheat(1886-1900)

Annual Conviction Rate It+

.54

.66

Annual Conviction Ratet+ I

.52

.56

*Based upon one year lagged values for petty theft. Pearson product moment correlations arereported. Grain prices are as follows: rye - price per 1,000 kilograms; wheat - price per 1.000kilograms.

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The above evidence demonstrates that considerations other than thosedirectly related to urban growth or the diffusion of industrial activity can beused to explain the rise in delinquency rates during this period. This is not toargue that urban-industrial development had no impact. Rather it merelystrengthens our view that time-series analyses, or highly aggregated data,produce only tentative and occasionally misleading results. Just because urbanindustrial development and delinquency rates both increased over a givenperiod of time is not conclusive evidence to support a "developmental" theoryof crime. Nor does the observation that prices rose in a covarying fashion withdelinquency argue strongly enough to support a hardship theory of delinquentbehavior. Our examination of delinquency rates over time at the Reich levelsuggests only very general and tenuous relationships with other social andeconomic phenomena. The relationships are clouded by an overall seculargrowth trend. 27 By refocusing our analysis on cross-sectional variations indelinquency and socioeconomic conditions within Germany, we expect to findmore meaningful and theoretically-interesting results.

Cross-Sectional Patterns in Delinquency

Early criminological studies28 called attention to two important spatialcharacteristics of the delinquency rate in modern societies. First, delinquencyrates tend to vary widely in different regions and locales within a singlepolitical system; and second, high delinquency areas tend to remain high or toexhibit high delinquency rates over time even though the composition of thepopulation may change radically within the same time period. Bothobservations are supported by the Prussian data. In Table 2, for example, wenote that the average delinquency rate for the Ileriod 1883-1887 was 497, butthe rate exceeded 1,000in two eastern districts {Danzigand Bromberg} and fellbelow 250in two western districts (Sigmaringen and Minden).

Table 5INTERCORRELATION OF JUVENILE DELINQUENCY RATES

INPRUSSIA, 1883-1912*

Period 1883-87 1888-92 1893-97 1898-1902 1903-07 1908-121883-871888-921893-971898-19021903-071908-12

1.00.98.87.80.73.72

1.00.94.87.78.75

1.00.95.85.79

1.00.93.88

1.00.90 1.00

*Based upon average rates for the total number of convictions per 100,000 minors (12-18 years)across 36 administrative districts. Pearson product moment correlations are reported.

While we have charted a secular growth trend in the delinquency rate at themacro level, albeit with some cyclical variations around the Great Depression,we discover a general pattern of stability over time at the subnational level.Variations in delinquency rates in Prussia continued to remain regionally stable

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even though significant changes were taking place in the structure of thesocioeconomic environment. One index of regional stability is the high degreeof interrelatedness among average delinquency rates over time demonstratedby the correlations reported in Table 5 (e.g., the lowest correlation is 0.72). Thisfinding is not unusual.i" Previous research has indicated that there is oftenconsiderable stability in various forms of social pathology when viewed from ageographical perspective. John Knodel and Steven Hochstadt.l" for example,discovered that district-level illegitimacy rates across Imperial Germanymaintained a correlation of over 0.90 for the period we are dealing with in ouranalysis. However, it must be noted that while the correlations amongsuccessive delinquency rates remained high, the degree of relatedness ofsuccessive years to the 1883-1887 level did gradually weaken over time. Thispattern suggests that some change, however slight, was taking place. Twosomewhat distinct periods of delinquency are observable based upon theclustering of correlations in Table 5: one before the turn of the century I andone after. 31

Delinquency was concentrated in northeastern Prussia in the years prior to1900. With some exceptions, notably Berlin, these administrative districts wereless urbanized, less industrialized and relatively poorer than the other Prussiandistricts. Many of these districts (e.g., Danzig, Bromberg, Marienwerder,Koni~sberg) were also heavily populated by non-ethnic Germans (mostlyPoles). After the turn of the century, however, the delinquency rate oftenstabilized or decreased in these districts. At the same time, the more heavilydeveloped areas of the Rhine-Ruhr region of western Prussia (e.g., Arnsherg,Dusseldorf, Colgne) registered dramatic increases in juvenile crime. In Colognethe rate increased by 344 between 1883 and 1911, in Dusseldorf by 297, and inArnsberg by 259.

The reason for the apparent stabilization of delinquency rates over severaldecades at the district level in Prussia is not easily explained. Some observershave attributed this phenomenon to a set of environmental factors contributingto high rates of recidivism, while others have suggested a theory of differentialassociation.V According to this view, delinquency is regarded as learnedbehavior whereby youth in one generation are trained, induced I or coerced intoundertaking criminal activities by their elders. The spatial implications of thetheory are that high delinquency areas should remain high despite change, andshould continue to display a stable pattern of behavior at the aggregate levelover time. As explained by Rosenquist and Megargee, who have attempted toapply this theory in a cross-cultural context: "'A high delinquency area isperpetuated as each successive cohort of teenagers is initiated into delinquentactivities by the cohort ahead of him. ,,:n

Although one should not understate the considerable stability in delinquencyrates in Prussia at the district level over time, the theory of differentialassociation would seem to have limited explanatory power in this case. It doesnot explain why changes in the geographical distribution of delinquency didoccur, nor does it help us to understand why some areas persisted in havinghigh delinquency rates when others did not. Also it is not theoreticallysatisfying to be content with the simple observation that criminogenicenvironments tend to perpetuate themselves. It would seem to be more

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important to question why such environments became that way, and why othersfailed to do so. The hypothesis of this paper suggests that the answer lies in thedifferential effects of modernization on various sectors of society, specificallyin the extent to which certain social groups gained access to or shared in therewards of economic development.

Table 6URBAN GROWTH AND DELINQUENCY·

DelinquencyPeriod

190019051910

Urban Growth,1885-1900

Absolute Ilifferencet"

-.08-.02-.11

Urban Growth,1885-1900

Percentage Rate···

-.17-.22-.16

*Based on 36 administrative districts. Pearson product moment correlations arc reported.

**Urban growth = urbanity level (1900) - urbanity level (1885)

{urbanity level 1900 - urbanity level 1885}***Urban growth = urbanity level 1885

Table 7URBAN AND INDUSTRIAL DEVELOPMENT AND DELINQUENCY

RATES·

Period Urban Level Steam Engines Industrial Workers

1883-1887 .23 -.29 -.181888-1892 .30 -.25 -.121893-1897 .44 -.14 .061898-1902 .47 -.01 .151903-1907 .45 .09 .251908-1912 .32 .10 .20

*Based on 36 administrative districts. Pearson product moment correlations are reported. Urbanindustrial measures are for 1885 and 1901.

Urban-Industrial Development and Delinquency

We have already produced some evidence to question the conventional viewthat delinquency is largely a function of urban-industrial development. Thecorrelational analyses presented in Tables 6 and 7 further demonstrate that adirect correlation between modernization and delinquency should not beassumed. In Table 6, district level delinquency rates are correlated with twomeasures of urban growth. Again, no matter which period we consider or whattype of growth measure we employ (either absolute or relative growth rates), wefind little in the way of a significant relationship. Various linear

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transformations of the data were also attempted with little success. Nor wasdelinquency consistently related to industrial development as a structuralcondition in Prussian society. Using steam engines per capita and industrialemployment as measures of industrialization in Table 7, we note that youthfulcriminality was hardly more prevalent in the industrialized areas. In fact, onlythe level of urbanity shows a consistent positive relationship over time. Thisrelationship varied in strength from a low of 0.23 in the period 1883-1887 to apeak of 0.47 at the turn of the century.

It is of significant interest to the social historian to discover that theassociation between urbanity and criminal behavior fluctuates over time. Ourobservation that German cities around the turn of the century harbored manymore delinquents than they did previously is consistent with our findings foradult crime in Imperial Germany. This pattern argues for a type of thresholdtheory of criminal behavior in relationship to economic development. It wouldseem that only at certain periods or stages in the development process are citiesapt to be pathological environments producing high rates of crime anddelinquency. Our evidence suggests that this appears to happen after a periodof extremely rapid urban growth as was the case in turn-of-the-centuryGermany .:J t During such times, when the cities are burdened with excesswelfare-prone populations, jobs, housing and social amenities becomeextremely scarce commodities and the mechanisms of distribution and conflictmanagement become strained. Adjustment to the socioeconomic environmentbecomes difficult, especially for new migrants into the city. Political discontentoften manifests itself,:J5 and the combined weight of all these hardships anddiscontent apparently induces many to satisfy their demands by illegal means.

What makes the threshold theory even more attractive is that it helps toaccount for the seemingly contradictory findings of Lodhi and TilIy,36 whofound crime to be highly related to urbanity in mid-century France, with ourown study of Germany in this later period. Louis Chevalier argued forcefully inhis graphic portrait of France in the final years of the July Monarchy that urbanconditions had reached pathological proportions precisely because of themassive wave of in-migration and city growth in the previous decade. But hewas also quick to realize that with the slowing down of the growth rate and withthe improvement of socioeconomic conditions, the urban crime problem woulddiminish in scope. This, he argued, occurred during the Second Empire inFranceY

The evidence cautions us against simplistic arguments which assign a directlink between delinquency and urban-industrial development. Neither the rateof urban growth nor the level of industrialization was in any way related todelinquency rates in Imperial Germany. The cities varied in criminogenicpotential. Only the level of urbanity, coming after an exceptional period ofgrowth, had a marked influence on the rate of delinquency. In suggesting atheory by which criminal patterns are related to stages of economic growth, wemust examine other causal influences beyond the mere fact of living in anurban-industrial environment.

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Disadvantageous Environments and Social Opportunity Structure

Having questioned arguments which explain delinquency in terms ofdifferential association and urban-industrial development, we now turn towarda clarification of the impact of disadvantageous environments and the socialopportunity structure on the distribution of delinquency rates in ImperialGermany. Although many 19th-century writers (e.g., Bonger, Guerry, Mayr)held poverty to be of prime importance in the causation of crime anddelinquency, contemporary research has tended to discredit or downplay thisfactor. Rising affluence has not brought an end to the crime problem; criminalsare drawn from all class backgrounds. Others have complained that themeaning of poverty is conceptually unclear, or its measurement is ambiguous.According to Clinard and Abbott: .

Poverty can mean insufficiency in relation to a certain standard of living, sharp inequalitiesof income distribution, inability to achieve certain aspirational levels, or a subculture ofbehavior patterns and attitudes ... Poverty may also be regarded as a relative concept interms of comparative incomes, and marked inequalities of income distribution in which the

h I . . 38poor represent t e owest segment In Income range.

Certainly there are difficulties in the measurement of poverty which maymake it a highly tendentious issue. However, under whatever conceptual rubricone chooses to place it - differential opportunity, lack of social access, relativedeprivation - our previous research into the geographical bases of crime inImperial Germany indicated that this socioeconomic factor was of crucialimportance.

In our study of adult crime in Imperial Germany, we relied heavily onindicators of taxation as a measure of district wealth. However, this particularvariable is subject to controversy in that the relative distribution of taxableincome would appear to have a less than clear relationship to actual conditionsof poverty, relative deprivation and lack of opportunity in German society. Theproblem is one of operationalization rather than conceptualization. In a societywhich still has so many people working on the land, taxable income is apt to bea better measure of occupational distribution than economic well-being.

Our need is to capture aggregate differentials in well-being and social access.In lieu of taxation measures, we will substitute measures of social opportunityand advancement such as mortality and education. Mortality was an importantcondition which differentiated social classes in the 19th century.I"

Education as a means of social access would seem to require little theoreticaljustification. Its importance in the opportunity structure of society today as wellas in the period under discussion should be obvious.l'' Indeed, it may be easierto establish the relationship of education to delinquency in the past than incontemporary society. In late 19th century, education was still not compulsoryfor all youth. A relatively high degree of illiteracy still existed even in a societylike Germany, which placed high importance on education.

There would appear to be little disagreement over the highly manifest impactof educational inequalities on the level of delinquency in Imperial Germany. Asindicated in Table 8, the existence of high levels of education appeared to be aretardant to crime among the youthful population. Areas which had high ratesof illiteracy exhibited correspondingly higher rates of crime, while areas with agreater proportion of juveniles in school and those areas which spent more

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money on education per pupil had correspondingly lower rates of delinquency.The latter finding indicates an interesting relationship between governmentpolicy (public sector spending) and the delinquency rate that merits furtherinvestigation.

Table 8EDUCATION AND MORTALITY MEASURES AND DELINQUENCY

RATES·

SchoolPeriod Illiteracy Students Spending Mortality

1883-1887 .74 -.58 -.33 .641888-1892 .68 -.65 -.31 .661893-1897 .48 -.75 -.32 .611898-1902 .49 -.66 -.35 .631903-1907 .46 -.51 -.46 .571908-1912 .53 -.44 -.42 .50

"'Based on 36 administrative districts. Pearson product moment correlations are reported.Education and mortality measures for 1886 and 1900 computed as follows:

illiteracy = a number of individuals who could neither read nor write per 1,000 districtinhabitants.

students = number of children attending school per 1,000 of the district school-age population.

school spending = amount of public educational expenditures per student.

Our other measure of social opportunity (mortality) produced similar results.Using district level mortality rates for two different years - 1886 and 1900 we found that delinquency varied positively and rather closely with death ratesacross Prussia. In summary, the very high correlations which mortality andeducation variables had with delinquency over the thirty years of our studyshows unmistakably that the German youth who came from an impoverishedarea, with little likelihood of attaining an adequate education, was much morelikely to show up in the criminal statistics than others in his age cohort in morefortunate environments.

Closely related to arguments concerning the impact of poverty anddisadvantageous environments on delinquency in Imperial Germany are issuesrelated to the condition of one's birth. The correlations presented in Table 9also suggest that family disorganization and culture conflict were factors whichcompounded the effects of poverty on delinquency. These figures support theargument of Rosenquist and Megargee that adverse family conditions appear tobe causally related to delinquency." It is interesting to note that illegitimacyand divorce were by no means uncommon in Germany at this time. Accordingto the German criminologist, Gustav Aschaffenburg, nearly 10 percent of allGerman children at this time were born illegitimately.V In comparison withother children, those born illegitimately also fared very poorly on othermeasures of deprivation. They had a higher mortality rate (approximately 30percent of all illegitimate children died in their first years as opposed to 10percent for legitimate children), and they were less likely to either attend orremain in school.43

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Table9DIVORCE, ILLEGITIMACY, ETHNICITY AND DELINQUENCY RATES·

Period1883-18871888-18921893-18971898-19021903-19071908-1912

Divorce

.55

.47

.34

Illegitimacy.46.45.53.46.34.21

Non-Germans.70.64.49.49.44.56

"Based on 36 administrative districts. Pearson product moment correlations are reported. Divorceand Non-Germans have been computed for the year 1900. Illegitimacy is an average measure forthe period.

Ethnic diversity is also of paramount importance in accounting for thegeography of delinquency in Prussia at this time. Almost one-tenth of thepopulation had a mother tongue other than Deutsch. Most of the non-ethnicGermans were of Polish origin, and until the 1890's, resided almost exclusivelyin the eastern border districts of Prussia. 44 While in some cases it is necessary todiscuss the question of ethnicity independently from deprivation, there arereasons to consider both inter-related phenomena in 19th-century Germany.Having the wrong Muttersprache at this time in German history meant that anindividual was apt to be born into a poor family with little access to educationalopportunities. The correlation between the percentage of non-ethnic Germansper district in 1900 and the mortality rate was moderately high (r = +.53). Thissame ethnic variable was also strongly correlated with illiteracy (r = +.85) in apositive fashion, and negatively related to doctors per capita (r = - .36) andtaxable income per capita (r = - .40). The interaction of ethnicity withmeasures of deprivation and social opportunity strengthens our conviction thatthese factors were among the most important conditions accounting forvariations in the delinquency rate across Imperial Germany.

Summaryand ConclusionsSpatial studies of the collective behavior of crime and delinquency are

necessarily limited in explanatory power because of the high level ofaggregation upon which they are based empirically. Their usefulness liesprimarily in suggesting areas for further research involving detailedinvestigations at the micro (individual) level. The purpose of this paper hasbeen to examine a number of popular theories which purport to explain thegeographical incidence of delinquent behavior in an historical context. Ouranalysis has demonstrated a strong relationship between certain socioeconomicfactors and the delinquency rate in Imperial Germany. The findings lead us todiscount arguments which explain delinquency almost solely in terms of urbanindustrial structure, and which understate the role of poverty, socialdisorganization, and inequalities in social opportunity.

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Several aspects of the delinquency rate have been observed. First, while thelevel of delinquency in Germany increased between the 1880's and the onset ofWorld War I, this increase showed little correspondence with urban-industrialgrowth.'l5 Although a general secular trend upward was noted, fluctuations incertain types of offences (petty theft being the most numerous) tended to followtrends in the business cycle. Second, changes over time at the national levelmasked an underlying stability in the distribution of delinquent behavior at thedistrict level in Prussia. With the exception of Berlin, the core delinquent areasof Prussia throughout this period continued to be located along the lessdeveloped eastern border (Bromberg, Danzig, Marienwerder, Oppeln, Posen).These districts were ethnically diverse with severely restricted socialopportunity structures, particularly in the area of educational advancement.

Although delinquency did tend to vary somewhat with the level of urbanity,the highest rates were found in those districts scoring low on measures ofeconomic well-being (e.g., doctors per capita, literacy, mortality, tax receipts,educational access, etc.), and also characterized by high levels of socialdisorganization (e.g., divorce, suicide, illegitimacy, etc.]. These latter factorsdisplayed a consistent relationship with the incidence of delinquent behavioracross the period.

In districts where the level of delinquency increased, the magnitude of theincrease was greater than the respective adult crime rate. The only exceptionswere Berlin and Oppeln where both delinquency and adult crime togetherincreased substantially. After the turn of the century, the new delinquent areasincluded districts in the central and western parts of Prussia (Arnsberg,Dusseldorf, Hannover, Cologne, Magdeburg, Stettin, Stralsundl.

Disadvantaged environments and social stress have been treated as byproducts of urban-industrial development. There is some evidence in ouranalysis to support a "threshold" theory of crime and delinquency, suggestingthat at certain times the urban environment is apt to be much more pathologicalthan at other times. Large-scale urban growth per se is not in itself a cause ofdelinquency. It appears that only in those situations where urban growth hasnot been accompanied by adequate change to accommodate demands placed onexisting facilities (educational, health, occupational, social, etc.) is increasedcriminality expected. Perhaps the critical variable is urban capacity.

The evidence presented in this study is both tabular and correlational. Whatemerges is a complex picture of delinquency, but one that has importantimplications for contemporary research. Although we have labored to show thatcertain contemporary theories are not wholly applicable to late 19th-centuryGermany, we have no grounds to state that they may not be valid in moremodern times or in other cultural settings. Additional historical research isneeded in other modernizing societies and in other historical periods in order toprobe the possible interactive effects of urban-industrial development on thedelinquency rate in relation to the factors of poverty, differential access, andsocial stress.

Central Michigan UniversityCase Western Reserve University

Eric A. JohnsonVincent E.McHale

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FOOTNOTES

journal of social history

*This is a revised version of a paper prepared for presentation at the 1977 Duquesne HistoryForum, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. We wish to thank Peter Stearns for his critical comments on anearlier draft, and Steve Scherer for his useful suggestions for final revisions. The researchreported here is part of a larger project dealing with the impact of developmental change on socialand political dissent in 19th-century Europe.

I. See the collection of studies reported in H.L. Voss and D.M. Petersen, eds., Ecology, Crime andDelinquency (NewYork, 1971).

2. See John P. Allison, "Economic Factors and the Rate of Crime," Land Economics, LXVIII(1972), 193-96; David Bogen, "Juvenile Delinquency and Economic Trends," AmericanSociological Review, IX:2 (1944), 178-84; Belton M. Fleischer, "The Effect of Income onDelinquency," American Economic RevieW, LVI (1966), 118-37; and Richard Quinney, "Crime,Delinquency and Social Areas," Journal ofResearch in Crime and Delinquency, I (1964), 149-54.

3. See David J. Bordua, "Juvenile Delinquency and 'Anomie': An Attempt at Replication," SocialProblems, VI (1958-59),230-38; Roland J. Chilton, "Continuity in Delinquency Area Research: AComparison of Studies for Baltimore, Detroit and Indianapolis," American Sociological Review,XXIX:l (1964),71-83; and T. Hirschi, Causes ofDelinquency (Los Angeles, 1969).

4. The literature on the relationship between crime and urbanity is abundant. Some of the moreimportant works are: Marshall B.Clinard, "The Process of Urbanization and Criminal Behavior,"American Journal of Sociology, XLVIII (September, 1942),202-13; and Denis Szabo, Crimes etvilles (Paris, 1960). For a useful summary, see Hermann Mannheim, Comparative Criminology(Boston, 1965), pp. 532-62.

5. William Douglas Morrison, Juvenile Offenders (London, 1896) quoted in John R. Gillis, Youthand History (NewYork, 1974), p. 172.

6. Walter C.Reckless, Criminal BehaviodNew York, 1940), p. 81.

7. Marshall B. Clinard and Daniel J. Abbott, Crime in Developing Countries (New York, 1973), p.83.

8. Joseph M. Hawes, Children in Urban Society (NewYork, 1971), pp. 9-10.

9. For example; see Eric 1. Monkkonen, The Dangerous Class: Crime and Poverty in Columbus,Ohio, 1860-1885 (Cambridge, 1975).

10. See John J. Tobias, Crime and Industrial Society in the 19th-Century (New York, 1967);Roger Lane, "Crime and the Industrial Revolution: British and American Views," Journal ofSocial History, VII (Spring, 1974), 287-303; and Abdul Qaiyum Lodhi and Charles Tilly,"Urbanization, Crime and Collective Violence in 19th-Century France," American Journal ofSociology, LXXIX (September, 1973),296-318.

II. Gillis, Youth and History, P: 176.

12. Ibid.

13. See, for example, Hans Hermann Burchardt, Kriminalitat in Stadt und Land (Berlin, 1936);Denis Szabo, Crimes et oilles; and especially Louis Chevalier, Laboring Classes and DangerousClasses, trnas. Frank Jellinek (NewYork, 1973).

14. A good example of the narrow focus of most of these studies is the often cited, one-page articleby Hans von Hentig, "Der Kriminelle Aspekt von Stadt und Land," Monatsschrift furKrimirialpsychologie und Strafrechtsreform, XXIII (1932), p. 435. In this work, von Hentig merelylists the crime rate of Amsterdam in comparison to the rest of Holland in the 1920's. A notable

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exception to this general observation is Ted Robert Gurr, Peter N. Grabosky and Richard C. Hula,The Politics of Crime and Conflict: A Comparative History of Four Cities (Beverly Hills andLondon, 1977).

15. Lodhi and Tilly, "Urbanization, Crime and Collective Violence."

16. Howard Zehr, Crime and the Development of Modern Society (London, 1976). Although Zehrpresents some useful time series correlations, he only conducts cross-sectional analyses for theperiod 1900-04 in France, and 1885-90 in Germany.

17. See Vincent E. McHale and Eric A. Johnson, "Urbanization, Industrialization and Crime inImperial Germany: Part I," Social Science History, I (1976), 45-78; and "Urbanization,Industrialization and Crime in Imperial Germany: Part II," SocialScience History, I (1977),21047.

18. See Gerald T. Slatin, "Ecological Analysis of Delinquency: Aggregation Effect," AmericanSociological Review, XXXIV(1968), 894-907. There is also a possibility that most American studiesmay be atypical when compared to other Western societies. See Lois B. De Fleur, "EcologicalVariables in the Cross-Cultural Study of Delinquency," in Harwin L. Voss and David M. Petersen,eds., Ecology, Crime and Delinquency(NewYork, 1971), pp. 283-302.

19. For example, the increases in the urban population in Germany between 1890 and 1910 wereso much larger than those of any previous period that those 20 years could be regarded as theperiod of "real development" of the great urban centers. For additional details, see Frank B.Tipton, Jr., Regional Variations in the Economic Development of GermanyDuringthe NineteenthCentury(Middletown, 1976), pp. 94-97.

20. The years 1882 to 1914 do not represent an entirely arbitrary time slice, however, as we areconstrained by the problem of data availability. The German Statistical Bureau first published dataon crime for all of the administrative districts of Prussia and Germany in 1882. This practicecontinued until 1914 after which criminal statistics were grouped and published by court districts.Unfortunately for the social historian, comparable socioeconomic data are not available at this newlevel. For an excellent discussion of the nature and the availability of criminal data for 19th and20th-century Germany, see Helmut Graff, Die Deutsche Kriminalstatistik, Geschichte undGegenwart (Stuttgart, 1975).

21. This study employs conviction rates to measure vanations in crime and delinquency.Unfortunately, the German government did not publish figures for the number of crimes reportedto the police or, as in France, the number of arrests. Reliance on conviction rates suggests caution,but it does not unduly alarm us. Unlike modern American society, most people arrested by thepolice in Germany at this time were eventually convicted and punished. For example, in 1886,432,802 people were arrested in Germany and 353,000 were convicted (about 85%). For additionalcommentary, see Michael G. Mulhall, TheDictionaryof Statistics(London, 1900), pp. 169-70.

22. For additional descriptions of German statistical sources, see James 1. Sheehan, "Quantificationin the Study of Modern German Social and Political History," in Val R.Lorwin and Jacob M. Price,eds., The Dimensions of the Past(NewHaven, 1972), pp. 301·31.

23. If we break down the delinquency rate into subcomponents, a more complex pattern ofbehavior emerges. Male and female ratios reveal an important differential that is concealed by amere examination of the overall rate. The female delinquency rate remained virtually stable overthe period, while the rate for males exhibited more variability, and seemed to account for majorfluctuations in the overall rate. Male delinquency closely paralleled the adult crime rate during thisperiod (r = +.88). For comments on the various types of criminal convictions in Germany at thistime, see Gustav Aschaffenburg, Crime and its Repression, trans. Adalbert Albrecht (Boston,1913), pp. 1l0-55.

24. Tobias, Crime and Industrial Society, pp. 152-53.

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25. See McHale and Johnson, "Urbanization, Industrialization and Crime in Imperial Germany:Part II," 216-24.

26. An early observation of this phenomenon is contained in L. Fuld , Der Einfluss tlerLebensmittelpreise aufdie Bewegung der strafbaren Handlungen (Mainz, 1881).

27. A moderate linear trend was observed (R2 = .39) in the overall delinquency rate.

28. See, for example, Clifford R. Shaw and Henry McKay, Juvenile Delinquency and Urban Areas(Chicago, 1942).

29. See R.C. Tryon, "Predicting Group Differences in Cluster Analysis: The Social Area Problem,"Multivariate Behavioral Research, II (October, 1967), 453-76.

30. See John Knodel and Steven Hochstadt, "Illegitimacy in Imperial Germany: A Study of UrbanRural Differentials," forthcoming in a volume dealing with illegitimacy in 19th-century societyunder the editorship of Peter Laslett.

31. A two-factor analysis was applied to the correlation matrix presented in Table 5 in order todistinguish the time periods.

32. Differ.ential association theory was first suggested by the criminologist Edwin H. Sutherlandover three decades ago. See Edwin H. Sutherland and Donald Cressey, Criminology (Philadelphia,1970).

33. Carl M. Rosenquist and Edwin I. Megargee, Delinquency in Three Cultures (Austin, 1969), p.23.

34. See McHale and Johnson, "Urbanization, Industrialization and Crime in Imperial Germany:Part II," 242-44.

35. Richard Tilly has shown that collective violence in Germany grew dramatically in the moreurbanized areas in the years of maximal urban growth. See Richard Tilly and Gerd Hohorst,"Sozialer Protest in Deutschland im 19. Jahrh undert: Skizze eines Forsch ungsansatzes"(unpublished ms, 1975).

36. Lodhi and Tilly, "Urbanization, Crime and Collective Violence."

37. Chevalier, Laboring Classes, p. 173.

38. Clinard and Abbott, Crime in Developing Countries, P: 173.

39. See Chevalier, Laboring Classes, p. 338.

40. See Gillis, YouthandHistory,pp. 70-71, 138-142, and 194.

41. Rosenquist and Megargee, Delinquency in Three Cultures, p. 16.

42. Aschaffenburg, Crime and Its Repression, pp. 130-131.

43. Ibid.

44. There were also sizable minorities of Danes and Frenchmen living along the Danish andFrench borders.

45. To further strengthen this point, we wish to remind the reader that the officially recorded risein the delinquency rate over these years mayor may not have resulted from a rise in actualdelinquent acitivity. In fact, German observers at the time were divided on the question. Anexcellent discussion of the controversy is contained in Graff, Die Deutsche Kriminalstatistik, pp.

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72-84. Not mentioned in Graff, but also instructive is Hermann Seuffert, "Die Bewegung imStrafrechte Wahrend der letzten dreissig Jahre," lahrbuch der Gehe-Stiftung, VII (March, 1901),1-71. And, even if we accepted the government statistics as valid, the apparent increase indelinquency after the turn of the century in some of the more highly urbanized and industrializeddistricts may have had less to do with developmental change than with the movement of certaindisadvantaged, and already criminal-prone, ethnic populations into these areas. An example of thisphenomenon would be the migration of Poles from eastern Prussia into the Ruhr region. Here, inparticular, is where solid micro and regional studies would heof much use.

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