• IdentificationMSSorr00
  • Title
    • Anthony Sorrentino papers MSSorr00
    • Sorrentino, Anthony papers
  • PublisherSpecial Collections
  • LanguageEnglish
  • RepositorySpecial Collections
  • Physical Description0.25 Linear feet
  • Date1975-1976
  • AbstractSociologist and writer Anthony Sorrentino was a staff member with Dr. Clifford Shaw's Chicago Area Project in the 1930s. The Chicago Area Project experimented with innovative methods of juvenile delinquency prevention through a partnership between community residents and trained professionals. Sorrentino also worked as a supervisor for the Institute for Juvenile Research from 1938-1957, as Assistant Superintendent of Community Services for the Illinois Youth Commission, and as Executive Director of the Commission on Delinquency Prevention. Sorrentino is the author of several articles and books on the causes and prevention of juvenile delinquency, including Organizing Against Crime: Redeveloping the Neighborhood (1977).
  • OriginationSorrentino, Anthony

Old Resource ID was ASorrentino

Sociologist and writer Anthony Sorrentino was born in Marsala, Italy on October 23, 1913. He immigrated to the United States in 1919 and grew up in the Italian community of the Near West Side of Chicago. Sorrentino received a Bachelor of Science degree from Lewis Institute (later Illinois Institute of Technology) in 1938 and did graduate work in sociology at the University of Chicago from 1939-1944. While a student there, he met sociologist Dr. Clifford R. Shaw. From 1934-1938, Sorrentino served as a staff member for the Chicago Area Project (CAP), a pioneering program founded by Shaw based on the principles of community organization, self-determination, and the use of indigenous neighborhood leaders to address problems of juvenile delinquency. From 1938 to 1957, he was a Junior Assistant Research Sociologist and later Supervising Sociologist with the Institute for Juvenile Research (IJR).

In 1957, when the field services staff of the Department of Social Services of the IJR came under the jurisdiction of the Illinois Youth Commission, Sorrentino became Assistant Superintendent of Community Services for the Cook County Unit. In the 1970s, after the Illinois Youth commission became part of the newly created Illinois Department of Correction, Sorrentino helped lead the fight to establish a Commission on Delinquency Prevention. Governor Daniel Walker appointed Sorrentino Executive Director of the new commission.

Sorrentino assisted Shaw with delinquency prevention and treatment workshops at the University of Chicago in the 1950s and in 1960, began to lecture in sociology part-time at DePaul University. Sorrentino has written numerous scholarly articles on the causes and prevention of juvenile delinquency and is the author of The Delinquent and His Neighbors (1975), Organizing Against Crime: Redeveloping the Neighborhood (1977), and How To Organize the Neighborhood for Delinquency Prevention (1979). Sorrentino was also a founder of the West Side Community Committee, co-founder of the Joint Civic Committee of Italian Americans, a member of the Board of Trustees of the Supreme Council of the Italo-American National Union and a President of the Italian Cultural Center in Stone Park, Illinois.

This collection consists of Sorrentino's resume and the typed manuscript for his book, Organizing Against Crime: Redeveloping the Neighborhood published by Human Sciences Press in 1977. Three unpublished sections are included containing information on E.L. Hicks, Principal of Jackson School during the 1920s and several life histories of delinquents.

The Anthony Sorrentino papers were donated to the Jane Addams Hull-House Museum in 1976 and accessioned in Special Collections, Richard J. Daley Library, University of Illinois at Chicago in March 2000.

Anthony Sorrentino papers, Special Collections and University Archives, University of Illinois at Chicago

  • NamesSorrentino, Anthony -- Archives
  • Subject
    • Chicago Community Organizations.
    • Chicago Political and Civic Life.
    • Sociologists.
  • Geographic CoverageIllinois--Chicago.