The Measurement of Delinquency in Montreal

This study is a partial replication of the extensive research by Sellin and Wolfgang 1 on constructing a sensitive index of delinquency (and crime).Their research has led them to devise a new and more adequate method for measuring delinquency, a method that takes into account the frequency, complexity and the degree of gravity of offensive events in which juveniles participate.The differential weighting of the seriousness of offenses is one of the main features of the research.This aim was obtained when "numerical" judgments were elicited from theoretically meaningful and large social groups in Philadelphia.The present paper compares the numerical judgments of a group of French Canadians, in Montreal, Canada, with judgments of a group in Philadelphia. 2The underlying theory used by Sellin and Wolfgang for the scaling of delinquency events is based upon work in psychophysics.The authors looked especially to S. S. Stevens' ideas and studies about objective methods of measurement which have been developed into psychological "laws" relating two different kinds of psychological scales. 3 These methods have been applied by Sellin and Wolfgang to such nonphysical dimensions as the graded seriousness of deviant behavior.Following many psychophysicists, the authors justify a preference for the magnitude scale relative to the category scale on the basis of the meaning that can be assigned to the average scale values of either of them.The heart of their point is that the magnitude estimation scale values are a product of the rater rather than the experimenter, and as such have an * The author is presently a doctoral candidate in sociology, specializing in criminology at the University of Pennsylvania, and has been a contributor to French and Canadian professional journals.Along with D. D. Akman, Mr. Normandeau last year received a grant from the Canada Council that allowed them to replicate