John J. Finlay Papers

John J. Finlay was an active board member of several social service organizations in Chicago in the 1930s and 1940s. He was deeply involved in a variety of groups all over the city, but much of his work was done on the North Side with civic committees and the North Side Boys Club. He also sat on the board of groups like Big Brothers, the Off the Street Club and the Serra Club of Chicago. However, it is perhaps most important to note his involvement with the umbrella organization of many of these groups, the Chicago Area Project (CAP).

The Chicago Area Project was founded in the 1930s by Clifford Robe Shaw, a sociologist from the University of Chicago. He worked with several other University of Chicago sociologists and the Illinois Institute for Juvenile Delinquency to set up the foundation for CAP. It was Shaw’s belief that there were no psychological reasons for delinquency in youths, rather that it stemmed from the environment and the community in which they were raised.

In creating CAP, Shaw hoped he could lower rates of delinquency by cleaning up neighborhoods, increasing community engagement, and working directly with youths labeled “delinquents.” This process began by plotting the home addresses of kids labeled delinquents, and targeting areas with the highest number. Once there, he recruited residents of the community to run the committees in their areas. These leaders organized workshops and programs, and CAP’s three community committees rose in number steadily throughout the decades. By the 1960s CAP was able to expand beyond the city, and moved into the surrounding suburbs, again recruiting leaders native to the areas.

Besides helping the kids stay out of juvenile detention centers, CAP and its affiliated organizations set out to disprove the common idea that children born and raised in low-income areas were not as smart or capable as their high-income counterparts. CAP wanted to show that when presented with the same opportunities as other kids, these children were equally successful. CAP still exists in 2021 and continues to be an umbrella organization that oversees and aids community-run committees in and around the city. Although it has been updated in ways that account for modern knowledge of child psychology, it still follows Shaw’s original idea that community engagement can keep children out of detention centers.