Toward a Developmental Theory of Parole

small number of underlying dimensions. The analysis also provides a basis for isolating, identifying, and describing crime areas in the large city. Of the various factor loadings, none are contrary to expectation, except of course Factor VII, which does not seem to possess any clear meaning. All of the variables are included in at least one of the factors. More specifically, 11 variables are included in only one factor, 15 are included in two, 11 in three, and one factor, completed suicide, is included in four. The analysis is based on the characteristics and relationships of census tracts, not of persons. Therefore, any conclusions that might be derived directly from the analysis logically pertain to areas and not to individuals. The factors obtained from this analysis are, like any scientific concept, abstract statistical artifacts. One aim of factor analysis is to derive, meaningfully and parsimoniously, factors containing all of the essential information of the original set of variables. It may or may not be possible to demonstrate a direct relationship between the factors and basic sociological processes. Although one may be strongly tempted to infer causality, the results of factor analysis merely measure the degree of concomitance among community structures and characteristics. The elements that are revealed may be purely coincidental and do not necessarily possess direct relevance to the etiology of crime. In order to determine how the basic dimensions derived for the city as a whole are related to specific areas, eight sets of standard factor scores were computed for each of 93 census tracts. To a greater or less degree, these scores reflect the various types of districts that comprise a large urban community. Although sweeping inferences are not warranted by a single study, it seems very likely on the basis of this investigation-as well as other research on the ecological structure of the urban community by the present author and his colleagues-that similar patterns are to be found in other American cities. Factor analysis can shed considerable understanding on community processes and characteristics as they relate to the crime problem, but there are many questions which it cannot answer. In an effort to fill in some of these gaps, the author is now preparing a second paper on the ecology of crime in which different data and alternative analytical techniques are being utilized.