There’s been much published about the Cambridge-Somerville Youth Study, which looked at the impact of intervention on delinquency in young Massachusetts boys. The groundbreaking research followed up with study participants for decades after the fact and found that the interventions they received as youths did not help them later in life. But until now, not many have cast an investigative eye on Joan McCord, the noted criminologist who directed CSYS from 1975 to 2004.
Brandon Welsh, dean’s professor of criminology at Northeastern University, and criminology Ph.D. candidate Heather Paterson recently published an article in The British Journal of Criminology that examines archival material to consider whether the initial blowback to the results had a lasting effect and whether McCord’s identity as a woman affected the initial controversy. While the research couldn’t completely determine how McCord’s identity affected the response to her work, they found she did experience some prejudice, none of which derailed her work.
