Shaw, Clifford R.: The Jack-Roller

Neal Shover

First published in 1930 and reissued in 1966, The Jack-Roller is the life history of “Stanley,” a 23-year-old Chicago man who had compiled by the time of its initial publication an extensive record of delinquency, crime, and incarceration both as a juvenile and a young adult. This entry describes the book, highlights aspects of Stanley's background and personality that contributed to his delinquency, comments briefly on the intellectual context of early-20th-century Chicago in which The Jack-Roller was compiled and published, and concludes with observations on the potential value and limitations of offender autobiographies as sources of data about crime. Stanley was the product of a large blended family with an employed but alcoholic father and an emotionally indifferent, if not abusive, stepmother. The family's residence was in low income and high delinquency areas of Chicago. Stanley's conflict with and antipathy for his stepmother figure prominently in his early life, and ...

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