This $12.9 million antipoverty program was initiated in the early 1960s to prevent delinquency on the Lower East Side of Manhattan.
As research director of Harvard's Center for Criminal Justice, Ohlin focused on investigating the risks that imprisonment poses, especially for young people.
[1] In a February 1968 speech in Boston delivered at the 15th annual Legislative Clearing House, Ohlin stated that "by doing nothing but processing children who get into trouble routinely through an overcrowded correctional system, we do more to develop than to stop career criminals".
[3] He taught at Harvard Law School until his retirement in 1982, after which he served as the Touroff-Glueck emeritus professor of criminal justice until his death.
[1] In addition to his stint as president of the American Society of Criminology, Ohlin devoted time to public service in several presidential administrations, including as a special consultant on delinquency to the United States Department of Health, Education, and Welfare under John F. Kennedy, as associate director of the President's Commission on Law Enforcement and Administration of Justice under Lyndon B. Johnson and as a member of the National Institute of Law Enforcement and Criminal Justice under Jimmy Carter.