McCord would go on to become the first female president of the American Society of Criminology. She bravely disputed the effectiveness of all sorts of revered helping institutions—boys’ clubs, summer camps, young offender prison visits, D.A.R.E. (Drug Abuse Resistance Education), and other popular programs. And she began a process, still slow to take hold in social science, of taking more careful stock of whether a social program actually does what it sets out to do.15
