Walter Reckless

Walter Reckless (born January 19, 1899, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, U.S.—died September 20, 1988, Dublin, Ohio) was an American criminologist known for his containment theory of criminology, which stated that juvenile delinquency commonly arises from a breakdown in moral and social forces that otherwise “contain” such behavior.

Reckless studied sociology at the University of Chicago (Ph.D., 1925), where he joined the American sociologists Robert Park and Ernest Burgess in conducting observational studies of crime in Chicago. That research led to his dissertation, The Natural History of Vice Areas in Chicago (1925), which was published as Vice in Chicago (1933), a landmark sociological study of fraud, prostitution, and organized crime in the city’s “vice” districts.

Reckless subsequently shifted his attention to the problem of delinquency among young offenders and eventually published the first text on the topic, Juvenile Delinquency (1932; coauthored with Mapheus Smith). He taught at Vanderbilt University until 1940, when he moved to the Ohio State University. There he served as professor of social administration and, later, as professor of criminology until his retirement in 1969.

During his years at Ohio State, Reckless conducted a large number of studies, often in collaboration with the American criminologist Simon Dinitz (1926–2007), on the behavioral patterns of nondelinquent boys who lived in high-delinquency neighborhoods. Reckless concluded that a good self-concept acted as an insulator against the social and personal forces that drove some boys toward delinquency (see human behavior: Self-concept, or identity). In the 1960s he generalized this finding into a containment theory, which argued that there are inner and outer forces of containment that restrain a person from committing a crime: the inner forces stem from moral and religious beliefs as well as from a personal sense of right and wrong; the outer forces come from family members, teachers, or others who influence the individual to some degree. The effectiveness of containment forces can be influenced by external factors such as effective supervision and internal factors such as a good self-concept. Reckless’s work also focused on “push-pull” forces as explanations of deviant behavior, including “internal” pushes such as discontent and rebellion and “external” pulls such as delinquent acquaintances.

Reckless’s containment theory gave rise to later control theories, including those of Travis Hirschi, that became dominant in criminology. In 1963 Reckless received the Edwin H. Sutherland Award from the American Society of Criminology for his contributions to theory and research.