Walter Reckless

Walter Reckless (1899 - 1988) was an American criminologist who became known for his containment theory.

Biography

Reckless was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania on January 19, 1899. He earned his Ph.D. in criminology in 1925 from the University of Chicago and that same year joined with sociologists Ernest Burgess and Robert Park in crime studies in the same place. After he finished the studies he wrote a book called The Natural History of Vice Areas in Chicago which was published as Vice in Chicago by 1933 and explained how prostitution and fraud create organized crime in vice neighborhoods. A year earlier, he wrote a book called Juvenile Delinquency in which he explained how young offenders become criminals. He taught at Vanderbilt University until 1940; he then moved to Ohio State University. During the 1960s he published his containment theory in which he made the argument that every person has inner and outer forces that restrain him from committing a crime. He died in Dublin, Ohio on September 20, 1988.[1]

References

  1. ↑ "Walter Reckless". Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved September 10, 2013.


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