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The urbanization process in Ghana involves the local community, the family, the school, and the peer group in a continuous sequence of influences upon the behavior of youth. Initial effects of urbanization are a disproportionate age concentration, an uneven male-female ratio, and the diminution of traditional kinship controls which are replaced by the less effective controls of the contemporary urban family. The male delinquency which occurs as a consequence of these factors, in both the central city and the adjacent villages, is also affected by the urban gangs that roam into the villages periodically to steal and to recruit members. Delinquent behavior may be seen as an adaptation by youths who have become alienated from the family and school and are thrust into a marginal social position for which the urban community lacks the institutions and agencies to channel the youngsters' needs and energies into conventional outlets. In this anomic state, some boys become attracted to deviant peers in the street society and look to them for guidance. These deviant reactions by youths can be seen more readily in the newly developing urban societies than in the more complicated urban societies of Western countries. LONG WITH THE POLITICAL emancipation and rapid technological advances in Ghana, West Africa, the concomitant processes of urbanization. have brought higher standards of living, education, and medical care; but they have also wrought increased rates of desertion, prostitution, crime, and delinquency., Our central aim in this report is to trace the effects of urbanization on male delinquency in Accra, Ghana.2 Urbanization continuously affects the local community, the family, and the school, which in turn affect the incidence of delinquent behavior. This approach-urbanization as a contributing factor in delinquency-is different from particularistic versions, which regard urbanization as an implicit context within which to analyze the influence of a single social unit such as the local community or family 8 Instead, this