PBH Committee to Tackle Problem Of Cambridge Juvenile Delinquency

A group of Phillips Brooks House volunteers will test "a new experimental method for dealing with juvenile delinquents" in Cambridge, President Richard E. Rubenstein '59, announced yesterday. The program will be organized as part of the PBH Juvenile Delinquency Project.

Charles W. Slack, assistant professor of Clinical Psychology and director of the group, said that it will not use the "traditional doctor-patient relationship, which has been rather unsuccessful in the past, but rather an employer-employee relationship in which the volunteer as employer pays the delinquent as an experimental subject for his attendance."

The group members will "teach, counsel, and befriend" the delinquents, Rubenstein added, but will not try to "cast themselves in the role of junior psychiatrists."

Another aspect of the project will be a statistical research survey by a PBH committee for the District Attorney's office of Middlesex County. Rubenstein stated that the group would "attempt to remedy the fact that there is no systemetized organization on juvenile delinquency in Massachusetts."

Members of this committee will examine the records and interview officers of various local organizations which deal with children in order to compile statistics on crime rates, causes of crimes, and the effectiveness of present measures for the prevention of juvenile delinquency.

In a third aspect of the project, the PBH Tutoring Committee initiated a program for tutoring juvenile delinquents after receiving three referrals from the Cambridge County Court Clinic. Rubenstein expects that the program will expand in the future.