CHAPTER XI. DEFICIENCY AS A CAUSE OF DELINQUENCY
In a preceding chapter we have shown the frequency of tested deficiency among various types of delinquents. We may now further consider the significance of this association of delinquency with deficiency. The best plan for discovering its meaning is provided by the technical method of correlation. The data in the published reports of the score or more of investigations which I have reported is wholly inadequate for following out this method. We must, therefore, for the present content ourselves with noting what has been discovered by the better analysis of similar data which was supplemented by the necessary information as to the distribution of the different types of crime in the corresponding general populations. To this we can add certain correlations in connection with the small Minneapolis group of tested juvenile delinquents.
We are indeed fortunate to have the fundamental work of Dr. Charles Goring on “The English Convict,” from which to formulate a point of view regarding the relation of deficiency and delinquency. This work represents ten years labor in making observations, collecting, tabulating, and statistically evaluating data on 3000 convicted men, who were found in the English convict prisons where they had been sent after conviction in the higher courts because guilty of grave or repeated offenses. It was carried out with the co-operation of a corps of workers who had the help of Professor Karl Pearson and his assistants at the Biometric Laboratory of the University of London, in the statistical reduction of the almost overwhelming mass of data. By the large use of partial correlation the relative influence of various factors upon criminality was investigated as it never had been before. It is, of course, not possible to reproduce here the conclusions of this monumental work which should be made more widely available in the libraries of this country. We shall, however, select certain conclusions which bear most directly upon our problem and which rest upon well established statistical deductions, and compare them with a few other studies which have contributed interesting side lights upon the causes of delinquency.
A. The Chances of the Mentally Deficient Becoming Delinquent.
“Every feeble-minded person is a potential criminal,” says Goddard in his work on Feeble-Mindedness (112, 514), and this sentiment finds an echo in the emotions of many social workers. On the other hand we have the careful work of Bronner in which she compares by their test records a group of delinquent women with groups selected from night classes and the servant class who had never been known to be immoral. On the average she finds that the delinquents do not test below her servant group. She says:
“Thus, though our delinquents are not as capable as their sisters, many of them from congested districts, who in other ways are proving themselves ambitious [the group from night classes,] yet they are no less equipped intellectually than others who are earning a livelihood and caring for themselves without coming in conflict with the law in the least. Whatever their mental status might be, measured by other means, the fact remains that there is no necessary correlation between their immoral or criminal tendencies and their intellectual ability and that others, no more endowed than they, are fighting life's battles without manifesting the same immoral or criminal tendencies” (112, p. 43).
What portion of these moral household servants of equal ability with the delinquents may later fall under temptation, we, of course, cannot say. Neither can we say that any of the delinquents would test deficient, since we do not know the border lines of deficiency with the tests which were used. The conclusion, however, is clear that, if corresponding grades of intellect may be delinquent or not at maturity, we must be cautious in assuming that the lowest grades of intellects would all become delinquent if not under supervision.
What chances we are running by allowing feeble-minded individuals to be abroad might be determined if we could find out the probability of tested deficients becoming delinquent. This question cannot be answered by showing for a single year or a period of years that crimes are relatively more common among the defective classes, although such figures give some impression of the danger of deficiency to the community.
Kinberg, for example, calculates that in Sweden during the years 1901-1907 murder was relatively 200 times as common as among those not in institutions, but lacking criminal responsibility through insanity or deficiency, as among those who were responsible, arson was 72.5 as common, manslaughter 12.63 times, other injuries to property than arson 6.55, rape 6.1 times, infanticide 4.59 times, larceny 0.99 times, and fraud 0.26 times ([132]). The data were based upon the reports of the Royal College of Health which makes the diagnosis as to criminal responsibility that is required for all cases in which this question arises. Such examinations, it is estimated, miss at least 15% of the deficient criminals.
Goring gives a table which shows what crimes are most likely to be committed by deficients. He found that 10% of the convicts in England and Wales were definitely treated in prison as deficient, and he estimated that 0.5% of the non-criminal population were equally deficient. His table is based upon the tabulation of 8,290 crimes past and present of 948 English convicts (Fig. XXXIX, p. 258). It is given below:
TABLE XVII.
Goring's Data as to the Percentage of Mental Defectives Among Men Convicted of Various Offenses. (948 Convicts)
| Firing of stack | 52.9% |
| Wilful damage, including maiming of animals | 22.2 |
| Arson | 16.7 |
| Rape (child) | 15.8 |
| Robbery with violence | 15.6 |
| Unnatural (sexual) offenses | 14.3 |
| Blackmail | 14.3 |
| Fraud | 12.8 |
| Stealing (and poaching) | 11.2 |
| Burglary | 10.0 |
| Murder and murderous intent | 9.5 |
| Rape (adult) | 6.7 |
| Receiving | 5.1 |
| Manslaughter | 5.0 |
| Coining | 3.3 |
| Wounding, intent to wound, striking superior officer | 2.9 |
| Embezzlement, forgery, fraudulence as trustee, bigamy, performing illegal surgical operation | 0.0 |
| General population | 0.5 |
Another table from Goring shows which groups of crime are most likely to be committed by the deficients compared with the frequency of that type of crime in the general population. It is reproduced in part below.
TABLE XVIII.
Goring's Data as to Groups of Crime Committed Most Frequently by Those Mentally Deficient
| Nature of crimes | Total criminals | Mentally defective | Percentages of mental defectives among those committing various crimes | Percentages of general population committing the several offenses |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Malicious damage to property | 55 | 22 | 40.00 | 0.406 |
| Stealing and burglary | 442 | 45 | 10.18 | 4.180 |
| Sexual offences | 101 | 13 | 12.87 | 0.199 |
| Violence to the person | 183 | 11 | 6.01 | 1.606 |
| Forgery, coining and fraud | 167 | 4 | 2.40 | 0.722 |
| Total | 948 | 95 | 10.00 | 7.203 |
Some very striking instances of recidivism on the part of the feeble-minded were summarized by Dr. Smalley in his evidence before the Royal Commission ([83]). He said:
“Against 130 out of 333 weak-minded prisoners who were unfit for ordinary penal discipline by reason of mental deficiency, no previous conviction had been recorded; but for this absence of record their nomadic habits might in part account. Against fifty-six 1 conviction had been recorded, against twenty-eight 2; the remainder varied from 4 to 105 convictions. About half had been convicted from 5 to 10 times.... Dr. Hamblin Smith, Medical Officer of Stafford Prison, as the result of a special inquiry into 100 mentally defective prisoners, found that 100 had a combined record of 1,104 convictions, or an average of 11 per prisoner, and this number was regarded as being below the actual truth. Ten of the prisoners had over 30 convictions. Dr. W. R. Dawson found that in the two prisons in Dublin 12.21 per cent. of the inmates were defectives. The average number of previous convictions for the females was 44.13. Many of them ran into hundreds, and one was in prison for the two-hundred and thirty-sixth time, and she was only twenty-nine years old.”
So far as I can discover nobody has directly attacked the specific problem, what percentage of individuals of a given degree of deficiency who are not under supervision, become legally delinquent at some time in their lives. A slight contribution to the empirical study of the problem is made in the reports of the follow-up work in connection with pupils formerly in special classes in the public schools which I reviewed in Chap. IV, f. We have also a telling report by Bullard of the New York Prison Association published by Moore in 1911 ([156]). It follows the records of 85 feeble-minded boys and men 16-29 years of age, paroled from the Elmira State Reformatory in 1904. The whereabouts of 3 were unknown and 2 died. Of the remaining eighty, 31 were arrested again and 6 others violated their parole. One was arrested 19 times in this short period.
The best approach to this problem of measuring the potential delinquency among deficients is afforded by Goring's four-fold table for calculating the correlation between deficiency and criminality in the male population of England and Wales (20, p. 259). By means of the annual data on first convictions of crime at different ages and the probable length of life among criminals and in the general population he has been able to predict a potential criminality on the part of 7.2% of the general male population. In other words, the best estimate seems to be that about 7 in every hundred males in England and Wales will be convicted of crime at some time in their lives. About 10% of the convicts in England for a series of years have been isolated in prison treatment because of deficiency. If we now also assume with him that 0.46% of the non-criminal population is mentally deficient, we arrive at the table which enables us to determine, on these assumptions, that it is most likely that 63% of the deficients will be convicted of crime at some time in their lives. If instead of taking this estimate of 10% of the criminals being deficient we had taken 20%, then the probability of a deficient individual being convicted of crime would rise to .77.
On the basis of our summary of tested delinquents in the last chapter it seems extremely conservative to suppose that 10% of the manifest and potential criminals are as deficient mentally as the lowest 1.5% of the general population. Even with this assumption we find that the chances would be 48 out of a hundred that a person of this degree of deficiency would be convicted of crime.
These estimates, I believe, afford a telling argument for the indefinite isolation of at least those who are in the lowest 0.5% mentally on the ground of their potential criminality, independently of any question of the danger to society from the hereditary transmission of the diathesis of deficient delinquency.
We have heard much in recent years of the particular danger of allowing the better grade of feeble-minded, especially the morons, to be abroad in the community. Time and again it is asserted that it is this class of deficients which is most likely to become delinquent. There is a widespread confusion here between the statement that criminals in absolute numbers are drawn more frequently from the moron class and the statement that morons are relatively more likely than imbeciles or idiots to become delinquent. To the first alternative there would be no objection since morons are much more frequent than the lower grades of deficiency. On the other hand if morons are relatively more likely to be delinquent than imbeciles, then we should expect those just above the morons in ability to be more likely than morons to be delinquent. The technical answer to the problem whether the lower grades of deficiency are more likely to become delinquent could be best reached by discovering the correlation of delinquency with the different grades of deficiency.
Goring's data throw some light on this question since he has found the correlation between grades of intelligence and the degree of recidivism and also between intelligence and the frequency of bad reports in the penal institutions where the convicts were held. In both cases the tendency is clear for the weak-minded and imbecile to be more frequently convicted and to be reported more frequently for bad conduct than for the higher grades of intelligence which he classifies as unintelligent, fairly intelligent and intelligent. The correlation coefficient with frequency of convictions relative to time out of prison is -.16 and with frequency of bad reports is -.33. The correlation ratios are slightly higher in both cases. On the other hand the more intelligent are likely to be given longer sentences, the correlation being +.10.[[33]] It might be contended that his distinction between the lowest grades of intelligence is not objective and not very clear; but that the general tendency of the regression lines would be reversed at the lower extreme seems very improbable. In other words there is some reason to suppose that, relative to their numbers, the idiots and imbeciles would be more likely to be delinquent than the more intelligent feeble-minded provided none was confined in an institution. No idiot and few, if any, imbeciles could survive honestly in any environment without assistance.
How closely the degrees of immorality are associated with the degrees of deficiency remains one of the most important problems to be answered authoritatively by the correlation of these traits when properly measured. That the greater degrees of immorality and of deficiency are on the whole associated and not opposed we have good reason to believe, but there are undoubtedly examples in which the degree of immorality or delinquency is out of proportion to the degree of deficiency. The fact that certain instances are found of moral imbeciles without corresponding intellectual deficiency, which has been noted by Stern (188, p. 75) and by Anton ([67]), does not of course determine the direction of the tendencies. We must base our deductions as to the danger of delinquency among lower and higher grades of deficients on our knowledge of the general tendencies. Are morons, relative to their numbers, more dangerous to the community than lower grade deficients? We must not make the absurd deduction that because morons are most numerous they are most likely to be delinquent and should therefore be most carefully isolated or supervised.
B. The Correlation of Deficiency and Delinquency.
Modern statistical methods afford the ultimate quantitative tool for determining the cause of delinquency, whether or not we also require that the data should be assembled under experimentally controlled conditions. The rapid strides which have been made in answering this fundamental question of criminology may be judged by noting the treatment of it in such a work as Goring's compared with the impressionistic literary style which has prevailed. Illustrations of particular cases, opinions subconsciously formulated by experts from wide experience in dealing with delinquents, even the votes of the majority of leaders in the field, give way before the acid test of measurement of tendencies in human traits just as poorer methods succumbed in the Middle Ages in the realm of the physical sciences. Quantitative determinations can no longer be brushed aside with a smile on the supposition that statisticians are the biggest liars. They must be answered by better data or more refined methods. The form of the discussion of social questions has changed. Correlation is a powerful new weapon for attacking these problems which promises to go far beyond the range of earlier blundering methods.
While partial correlation affords an ideal approach to answering the question of causation, it has been used only to a very limited extent. The necessary data for comparing the closeness of relationship of various suggested causes of delinquency are not available and too few who are interested in social problems have appreciated the significance of the method. We should, therefore, lay especial emphasis on the measurement of the correlation of deficiency and criminality by Goring. He laboriously assembled the only data which are sufficiently extensive to allow much reliance to be placed upon their statistical reduction. In his use of correlation, moreover, he acted under advice from the main center for this work at the Galton Laboratory in London.
If those who were “mentally defective” under Goring's designation were always convicted of crime and none of those who were not defective were ever convicted of crime, the measure of the relationship between criminality and deficiency would be expressed by a correlation coefficient of +1.00. If there were no relationship whatever between deficiency and criminality the coefficient would be 0.00. If the deficients were never convicted of crime and the non-deficients were always criminal the coefficient would be -1.00. Intermediate degrees in the relationship of these tendencies would then be represented by decimals which would be either positive or negative, depending upon whether the traits were associated together or were opposed. The coefficient which he found for the male population was +.6553, which was much higher than that for any other constitutional or environmental factor which he measured.
In calculating this correlation Goring regarded 10% of the criminal male population as defective. He found that this was in agreement with the common tendency in English convict prisons to class officially about this portion of the criminals as defectives and needing care. He also assumed that 0.46% of the non-criminal male population in England and Wales was defective, the proportion suggested by the report of the Royal Commission on Feeble-mindedness. By a careful computation he calculated that 7.2% of the males either have been or will be convicted of crime before they die. He then constructed the four-fold table on the basis of these estimates as applied to the 948 convicts whom he examined as to their mental condition. The coefficient was then calculated by Pearson's method for a four-fold table. This method assumes that the mental ability and the tendency to criminality are distributed normally in the population and that the difference in numbers between the criminal and the non-criminal, deficient and non-deficient are not too great. In case the percentage of defectives among the criminals were taken as 20% instead of 10% the correlation would be increased to .79.
Using the same four-fold method we may calculate the correlation between deficiency and juvenile delinquency among Minneapolis boys. It is necessary to make a good estimate of the proportion of boys who annually become delinquent in Minneapolis for the first time, and of the proportion of these boys who are correspondingly deficient. Fortunately these comparisons can be made fairly accurately on the basis of the reports for the year 1915 and of our tests of juvenile delinquents. We may use a minimum and a maximum estimate of deficiency among the delinquents corresponding to those that tested below borderlines which represented the lowest 0.5% and the lowest 1.5% of the population of corresponding ages. We need to assume that the frequency of tested deficiency among the boys found delinquent would correspond within these limits to the frequency among the Glen Lake group. The indices for the amount of school retardation in these two groups (Table XIV) indicate that this is a liberal estimate. We must also assume that the proportion of juvenile delinquents for the year 1915 may be regarded as typical for a series of years. The number of new cases of boys in juvenile court in 1915 was within 18 of the median number for the last four years. The result of these estimates is Table XIX for the minimum estimate of deficiency. A similar table for the maximum estimate of deficiency would be the same, except that the proportion of all boys of these ages who were deficient would be 1.5%, and of the delinquent group, 7.3%.
The computation of the correlations by Pearson's tetrachoric r shows the relationship between juvenile delinquency and deficiency among boys to be .16, P. E. .07, on the minimum estimate of deficiency. On the maximum estimate the correlation is .29, P. E. .05. In order to make a closer comparison between Goring's calculation and my own I have recalculated the correlation for his group on the assumption that 0.5% of the general male population were deficient and that 1.29% would be convicted felons of the type among which he found 10% to be deficient. This brings the minimum correlation for his figures to .59, P. E. .03.
TABLE XIX
Four-Fold Correlation Table for Juvenile Delinquency and Deficiency in Minneapolis (Minimum Estimate).
Boys 8-16 Years of Age
| Non-Deficient | Deficient | Total | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Non-Delinquent | 22,305 | 109 | 22,414 |
| Delinquent | 268 | 4 | 272 |
| Total | 22,573 | 113 | 22,686 |
The total number of boys is taken from the census of school children for 1915-16 compiled by the attendance department of the Board of Education. It includes those in public, parochial and private schools and those not attending. The number of delinquent boys is taken from the report of the Juvenile Court of Hennepin County, Tables H and I. The number of repeaters and the proportion of delinquent cases dismissed at the hearing are subtracted from the total number of new cases.
The difference between a correlation of .29, the highest I found, and .59, Goring's lowest result, indicates that conviction for felony in Great Britain is more closely associated with deficiency than juvenile delinquency is associated with deficiency in such communities as Minneapolis. It is to be remembered, however, that Goring's calculation gave the convicts a life-time in which to be convicted, while ours gave the boys only 16 years. The relation of potential delinquency after 16 years of age to deficiency might be greater among Minneapolis males than the corresponding relation we found among the boys; but the difference in these correlations is more easily explained by supposing that the type of serious delinquency represented by sentences to penal servitude, in England at least, is more closely related to deficiency than are the lighter forms of delinquency found among the youth of an American city.
The most significant fact demonstrated by the correlations between juvenile delinquency and deficiency is that there is a positive relationship which is significant in amount. With the maximum estimate the correlation is nearly 6 times its error. This is the first time that the relationship has actually been calculated in connection with any group of juveniles. We can say that when a Minneapolis boy is below the average in tested ability for his age, he is most likely to be .16 to .29 of the same amount below the average in legal conduct, both measurements being in corresponding units.
What then, is the significance of correlation in answering the problem of causation? So far as the statistical method itself is concerned it shows only a mathematical functional relation between the conditions measured, not a physiological relationship. In other words a correlation between deficiency and delinquency might be explained by both conditions being related to some more fundamental factor which might be the causal factor involved. One cannot reason from correlation to direct causal connection. On the other hand, by correlation we may directly compare the relation between any one trait and various factors. We can find out, for example, whether the association of delinquency with deficiency is closer than the association of delinquency with other factors which it has been suggested are causes of delinquency. Goring's work allows us to compare the correlation of the tendency to be convicted of crime with deficiency and with many other constitutional and environmental factors which have been measured, and thus our attention may at once be directed to that factor which the present evidence indicates as most fundamental. Unless the measurement of the various factors is shown to be seriously faulty or incomplete the outcome should determine our point of view as to the main cause of delinquency, until new evidence is forthcoming. This is the problem of the next section.
C. The Causes of Delinquency.
As we have noted above, the correlation of delinquency with various factors should give us a scientific point of view as to the main causal influence in criminality. Thanks to Dr. Goring this work has recently been carried far. His findings mark a new and higher scientific level in the study of criminology. No data are now available which modify his position in any important regard. I shall, therefore, attempt to give his evidence in the briefest possible manner, hoping that it may lead to a closer reading of his basal investigation.
(a) Constitutional factors.
First comparing a dozen factors in the individual's own constitution which may be measured by the death rates, Goring found the tendency to be convicted of crime was correlated most closely with alcoholism, .39; sexual profligacy (syphilis and aneurism), .31; and epilepsy, .26; while it was found to correlate with intelligence, .66. The closeness of the relationship of defective physique to criminality was expressed by coefficients of .18 and .19. Among the inner factors investigated were many of Lombroso's characteristics of the so-called criminal physiognomy of which so much use is made by phrenologists, such as asymmetries, projection of the chin, complexion, form of the face and features, kind of hair, tattooing, left-handedness, temperament, etc.
Following this analysis, we find that alcoholism, epilepsy, and probably social profligacy are closely associated with intelligence as well. By means of partial correlations he shows that when individuals of the same degrees of intelligence are compared there is only slight additional relation between alcoholism or epilepsy and criminality. The relations to these other conditions are therefore accidental, depending upon the fact that deficients are more likely to be alcoholic and epileptic, the fundamental constitutional factor being intelligence. Among over forty physical and mental factors, the only other condition which he found to have significant relation to criminality is a generally defective physique as shown by height and weight, neither of which is correlated with intelligence.
Regarding the above inner factors he summarizes his conclusion as follows:
“Our final conclusion is that English criminals are selected by a physical condition, and a mental constitution which are independent of each other—that the one significant physical association with criminality is a generally defective physique; and that the one vital mental constitutional factor in the etiology of crime is defective intelligence” (20, p. 263.).
(b) External factors.
Turning now to certain factors which might be supposed to be important mainly as environmental influences, Goring studied the length of imprisonment and the frequency of reconvictions for crime relative to the periods of freedom as two measures of the degree of recidivism among his criminal group. He measured the correlation between the degree of recidivism and such outer factors as formal education classified by the kind of school training, whether received in the elementary school, secondary school, or at a compulsory industrial or reformatory school for delinquents, also formal education as measured by the age at leaving school; effective education as measured by the grade in school reached at the time of leaving and by the educational grade assigned the convict in the prison school; regularity of employment classified under the headings regular, occasional, voluntarily unemployed, unemployable; alcoholism under estimates as to the convicts' intemperance, temperance or abstinence; family life, in which the standard of life was classified as well-to-do, prosperous poor, poor, very poor, and destitute; the influence of maternal authority measured by the age at death of the mother, order of the subject in the family, and number in the family, thus reaching the question of only sons and of size of family; nationality; and finally the relation of age at which the first sentence was received and the nature of the sentence to subsequent convictions.
The significance of the relation of these external influences upon the degree of recidivism is not directly comparable with the influence of these factors upon the tendency to be convicted or not to be convicted of crime at all, as he carefully explains. Since the distribution of the above factors in the population at large is not known, the relationship to criminality in general could not be measured for the outer factors as it was for the inner factors discussed previously. Reserving, then, our judgment as to how closely these environmental factors may be related to the criminal tendency not represented by recidivism, we can reach important conclusions as to their relation to the degree of recidivism. Only one of the coefficients was found to be large enough to be twice its probable error, so that as a whole they were not at all significant. He summarizes his conclusions as follows:
“The relative values of these contrasted coefficients demonstrate effectively and conclusively one truth: that an adverse environment is related much more intimately to the intelligence of the convicts than it is to the degree of their recidivism, or to the nature of the crimes they commit. Moreover, since mental defectiveness is closely related to crime, an easily imagined corollary to this truth is that the mental defectiveness of the convict is antecedent to his environmental misfortunes, rather than that his unfortunate circumstances have been responsible for the mental defectiveness of the convict, and his lapse into crime....”
“From the general trend of the results tabulated above, our interim conclusion is that, relatively to its origin in the constitution of the malefactor, and especially in his mentally defective constitution, crime in this country is only to a trifling extent (if to any) the product of social inequality, or of adverse environment, or of other manifestations of what may be comprehensively termed 'the force of circumstances'” (20, p. 287-288).
The caution which we have noted above, as to the influence of outer factors having been measured in relation to recidivism rather than to criminality, becomes more important when we find that the correlation of high intelligence with frequency of convictions is also low, only -.16 and to fractions of a year imprisoned +.10. Since the relation of intelligence to criminality in the general population is +.66, we cannot be at all sure that these outer factors, or some of them, might not also be much more closely related to criminality than they are to recidivism. Besides this caution we might also urge that some of the most important outer influences have not yet been evaluated by correlations. We know nothing, as yet, except by inference about the correlation of delinquency with the influence of bad companions outside the home, bad school adjustment, the effect of broken families aside from the early death of the mother, absence of proper recreation, and many other stimuli for delinquency which social workers have been studying for years by less conclusive methods.
Just to recall the frequency of some of these other conditions associated with the environment of the youth we may note that Aschaffenburg says that Abanel found in Paris “among 600 criminals under twenty years of age in 303 cases the family life of the parents was destroyed owing to death, divorce, desertion, illicit relations, or to some similar cause” (208, p. 133). Again he states that in 1841 Father Mathew, by making 1,800,000 total abstainers temporarily reduced serious crimes in Ireland from 12,096 to 773 per annum in a period of three years. Miss Rhoades by a personal evaluation of many factors involved in each of 81 random cases of juvenile delinquency in Chicago found that the main cause in 67 cases was some home condition and in 9 others it was a special temptation in street gangs, while only in 5 was the main cause mental subnormality ([171]). That nearly half of the juvenile delinquents come from broken families, affected by death, divorce, or desertion has been frequently shown. A study of more than a thousand successive cases in the Minneapolis juvenile court by Miss Finkle showed that 39% of them were from families not normally constituted, families in which one of the natural parental guardians of the children had been removed ([105]). We also have an important study of the relation of the delinquent child to his home by Breckenridge and Abbot ([82]).
While there is always a possibility of finding some other factor closely related to delinquency and independent of capacity, nevertheless we should hardly urge this possibility at the present time as overweighing the accumulation of negative evidence which has been assembled in recent years, especially at the Galton Laboratory. We should remember that many so-called outer influences are, like the temptation to drink, related to the incapacity which precedes the temptations. There is also good reason to suppose that many bad environmental surroundings result from rather than cause deficiency. Even broken homes may be a result of incapacity, to which undoubtedly early death is related. The first essential for social philosophers is to recognize that so-called environmental factors may have their corresponding inborn correlates. This is almost invariable with home conditions. The problem is to weigh the relative importance of these outer and inner factors on the same individuals.
(c) Weighing heredity against environment.
Both subjective and objective methods have been used in trying to determine whether heredity or environment has the most influence upon criminality. The earlier and subjective method is one for which Gruhle is perhaps the leading advocate. By this method an expert with wide experience judges the relative effect of inner and outer causes of delinquency in particular cases. In his study of 105 minor delinquents in a German industrial school Gruhle, after a thorough and systematic clinical and sociological study of each person, gave his judgment whether heredity or environment was the main cause of delinquency in the case. In his summary he concluded that in 9 cases the fundamental cause was found in the environment, in 8 cases in environment plus a subordinate influence of heredity, in 41 environment and heredity were balanced, in 20 cases heredity was the main influence but environment was a subordinate factor and in 21 heredity was considered the causal factor. This shows that, when each case was estimated separately, in his opinion heredity on the whole turned out to be more important than environment for this group. By the same subjective method Gruhle weighs the influence of family taints such as mental abnormalities, deficiency, and drunkenness as against the hereditary influence in crime, and comes to the surprising result that in 9 cases where both parents were abnormal mentally or drunken in only two cases was heredity the predominant cause of the delinquency, while in 7 cases where neither parent showed these taints the delinquency was invariably explained by heredity. The group whose delinquencies were in his opinion mainly due to heredity showed, curiously enough, less family taints from nearly every point of view. He concludes:
“The knowledge that so many of the criminal youths are abnormal is indeed very significant for the therapeutic treatment of the social offenders, for the choice of the ways which should be used to improve the youths; but this knowledge has no significance for establishing the causes of delinquency.... The abnormal parents really have more children who are abnormal and under the average in capacity, but their children are actually more seldom delinquent because of the natural tendencies than the children of normal parents” ([121]).
Healy has followed a similar plan in subjectively weighing the influence of various factors as causes of the delinquency of 823 recidivists before the Psychopathic Institute at the Chicago Juvenile Court. Although he does not directly estimate hereditary and environmental factors as such, his summary of these estimates of separate cases shows the main cause of delinquency in 455 of these cases to be some form of mental abnormality or peculiarity. Abnormal physical conditions, including excessive sex development accounted for 40 more. His other causes, which embraced only 26% of the cases, might possibly be regarded as directly environmental. They included defective home conditions, including alcoholism, bad companions, mental conflicts, improper sex experience and habits, etc.
Thus we find that the two most important expert estimates of individual cases after exhaustive study apparently agree in placing the main causal influence on factors which are predominately inner rather than outer. The most serious objection to this method of approaching the problem is that we have no way of determining how far such a result is the effect of the expert's unintentional bias. Gruhle's analysis of his delinquent group, however, raises very clearly the question whether the total influence of heredity may not be markedly greater in the production of delinquency than merely the heredity influence through mental deficiency and abnormalities in the families.
A better method of evaluating the relative influence of heredity and environment would avoid the danger of subjective bias by studying objectively measured factors. With either the subjective or objective method correlation affords a better way of statistically handling the results. The best approach to an objective study of the inner and outer causes of delinquency by the correlation methods is furnished by Goring. The ingenuity of the biometrical procedure in applying correlation to resolving this perennial question of heredity and environment must be recognized by all who take the time to understand its methods. We can only briefly consider the results of Goring's chapter on “The Relative Influence of 'Inheritance' and 'Contagion' upon the Occurrence of Crime and the Production of Criminals.”
This work conclusively demonstrates that crime runs in families. The probable value of the correlation between conviction for crime on the part of the father and son was found to be .60, while the correlation between mother and son was only slightly less. The tendency to resemble brothers in criminality was shown by the probable fraternal correlations of .45. Whether this family resemblance is mainly through nature or nurture is the problem.
In analyzing the influence of the home he uses partial correlation and finds that the correlation between age at first conviction and the number of convictions for a constant period of time after the first conviction is -.243. “From the value and sign of this coefficient, we see that the earlier in life a child commits a criminal offence, and is consequently removed from his home, the worse criminal does he become; and, accordingly, we conclude that criminal proclivities are more bred in the home than inoculated there” (119, p. 368). This argues against the predominant influence of the home training or example as explaining family resemblance in criminality. Nevertheless, it would seem that the result might also be interpreted as meaning that the contact with other delinquents and official discipline outside the home at a more impressionable age notably increases the tendency to recidivism.
Besides the argument as to the earlier removal from home, we have a test of the question whether those kinds of crime that are most influenced by contagion show closer correlation within the family. His statement of the results is as follows:
“Our table 177, above, starting with crimes of fraud, passes to stealing and burglary—professional crimes, where the influence of criminal contagion should be the most intense; and then progressively to violence, arson and sexual offenses, in which last it is difficult to understand how the influence of example could have any effect at all. We can understand the influence of parental training in the original moulding of a professional burglar or thief, and, to a certain extent, it is conceivable that the constant spectacle of the lack of control in parents might lead their offspring to emulate them in acts of unlawful violence. But, that parental example could play any part of importance in the perpetration by their offspring of crimes such as arson and wilful damage to property, and, particularly, of sexual offenses, is not reasonably to be supposed. As seen in the above table, 177, the parental correlation for sexual crimes, and crimes for wilful damage to property is from .45 to .5; for stealing, it is from .48 to .58. We would assume then, from this evidence, that the tendency of the inherited factor in criminality is from .45 to .5, and the intensity of criminal contagion is anything between .05 and .1” (20, p. 367).
Other evidence as to the relative influence of heredity and training, which Goring suggests, is in connection with the difference in influence of the two parents. If the contagion were from either the mother or father alone, the difference in resemblance to that parent and the other might indicate the strength of the contagion. The difference amounts to about .05. This again, in his opinion, gives some idea of the relative importance of nature and nurture within the family. The measure would not be complete unless the hereditary tendency to resemble mother and father were equal and the contagion were all from one parent.
Husbands and wives tend strongly to resemble each other in crime, the correlation being .6378. This resemblance is of course not due to heredity. Goring believes that it is not due to contagion and argues that besides the subjective tendency for the criminals to associate together, there is here a large element of conscious choice of a mate among the criminal classes, especially as the criminal woman shows the tendency most clearly and would not be able easily to get a non-criminal husband.
This work of Goring illustrates how an important beginning has been made in applying the correlation method to objective records, in order to weigh the relative importance of hereditary and environmental sources of crime. Perhaps its most important support is the close agreement between his conclusions as to the importance of the native diathesis of criminality and other studies by the biometric school as to the family tendencies in physical traits such as stature, eye color, tuberculosis, insanity, and deafness. These all tend to show a correlation between parents and children or brothers and sisters of about .5 as compared with relations to environmental factors which tend to be less than .1 ([165]).
(d) The criminal diathesis.
If one accepts the point of view that the cause of crime is to be considered analogous to that of pulmonary tuberculosis, his understanding of the etiology of crime gains immensely. The old question of whether the criminal is born or made is answered, “both.” But the emphasis from our present data is on the inborn tendencies. Moreover, being born with the criminal diathesis does not mean that a person is predestined to commit crime, but that he is more likely than his neighbor to be infected by the contagion of delinquency. We have only to catch the trend of recent scientific research to extend our vision further. The criminal does not lack a simple unit character which would otherwise make him whole as some of the disciples of Mendel seem to argue. Neither is the criminal diathesis a simple instinctive tendency like the tendency to make a specific response to a specific stimulus, e. g., to wink when an object approaches the eye; the criminal is not charged with a specific propensity to commit murder or to steal. The safety of those who are more susceptible lies in keeping away from the contagion of bad example and temptations to fall, toward which he is generally less resistant than others. Specific training in strengthening and guarding his weakest spots may in time build up a resistance to temptations, the amount of which we cannot yet measure. His hope lies in the recognition of his weakness and the adjustment of his living so that his whole organism may support the breach in his make-up during the struggle with himself and with society.
In this complex diathesis which means greater susceptibility to temptations, there is little doubt that mental deficiency is the main factor. Aschaffenburg has well expressed one effect of this particular causal factor: “The weak-minded are generally children of the moment.... The lessons of experience, which serve normal persons as a guide, in later events, soon fade, be cause they cannot be fitted into the existing condition of the ideas. The inability to understand, much less to form general points of view, is the direct result of mental weakness” (20, p. 180). Lacking the ability to organize their experience, fixed punishments have little restraining influence. Only prolonged training and supervision can save them from being the victims of the moment. Even the large majority above the grade of ability which would justify indefinite supervision still show their stupidity in the offenses they commit. Goring gives an instance of a watch repairer who was legally punished nine times for pawning watches entrusted to him to repair. Who would doubt that native stupidity is an important cause of the recidivism which is so common a criticism of our present forms of legal discipline? It is stated, for example, that 10,000 of those convicted in one year in England had been convicted more than twenty times before (165, p. 59). Even with school punishments the same association of bad conduct and stupidity holds. Kemsies has shown, as quoted by Terman, that the 16% ranking lowest in a group of pupils received 80% of the punishments, while the brightest third received almost none ([194]).
That the criminal diathesis is not limited to mental deficiency is demonstrated by Goring's results. He shows its smaller correlation with deficient physical size, alcoholism and suicidal tendency with such pathological conditions as insanity and epilepsy, independent of their relations to mental deficiency. In this connection Gruhle's opinion that the hereditary tendency to crime was greater among his non-defective families may be borne in mind.
That mental ability, and especially mental deficiency, is primarily a question of inherited capacity rather than training, is now indicated by a number of fundamental objective studies of the correlation of abilities within the family, which have been analyzed to show the relative influence of inborn and external factors. Among these studies Thorndike's investigation of the tested abilities of twins compared with brothers and sisters in the same family is the most objective, and is very convincing ([199]). He has also summarized the evidence so well that it is not necessary to go into the question here ([198]). One of the most important facts is that equal practise under the same conditions increases the difference between individuals rather than makes them more alike. The work of the English biometricians appearing in Biometrika and the monographs from the Eugenics Laboratory is the most important in this field, and cannot be summarized here. It includes family resemblance in both pathological and healthy mental traits ([126]).
As compared with these studies the attempt to show that feeble-mindedness is inherited, because many of those in institutions for the feeble-minded are from families showing mental taints, lacks cogency, since we are still uninformed as to what portion of the offspring of parents with and without deficient minds are deficient. Even if 85% of the children in institutions for the feeble-minded have tainted parents this does not mean that we know what percentage of deficient parents have deficient offspring. It is this latter fact that we must know in order to predict the danger of defective offspring from deficient parents. From what we know about the correlation of parents and offspring in mental ability, it is clear that the more deficient are the parents, the more likely it is that their offspring are deficient. Children of morons are, therefore, not so likely to be deficient as are children of parents with lower grades of ability. From the eugenic point of view, it is, therefore, most important first to protect society from propagation by the lowest grades of deficients, provided that all grades of deficients are equally likely to have children when left unrestrained in society. Since mental and moral qualities are probably correlated positively, the same emphasis would be placed on first isolating the lowest grades in order to reduce inheritance of criminality. The eugenic emphasis waits, however, on the discovery whether the greater tendency for the lowest types to be produced by the lowest types is overbalanced by any tendency of deficients or delinquents of lower degrees to be less productive when unrestrained in society.
The conception of a criminal diathesis does not stop merely with the notion that there is an inborn predisposition to crime. It considers further that offenses do not occur except under the stimulus of certain situations, even if such stimuli may be even more common than the tubercle-bacillus. The important question which it now puts to science is, “How much may the actual outbreak of delinquency be reduced with better methods of social prophylaxis?” Even if, “the chief tasks of social hygiene” are the “struggle against alcohol and against poor economic conditions,” as Aschaffenburg believes (68, p. 228), the chief emphasis from the best scientific work still seems to be that the problems of alcoholism, poverty and crime are more closely related to internal than to the external conditions which have thus far been measured. Guarding against the propagation of mental deficiency thus seems to be the most direct and hopeful method of attack, while the removal of infecting temptations, and training for greater resistance, should receive hearty, albeit subordinate emphasis.
[33]. See the next section for the significance of these coefficients of correlation.