The Delinquent, Vol. IV, No. 6, June, 1914

by Various

PSYCHOLOGICAL WORK WITH OFFENDERS FOR THE COURTS

By William Healy, M. D.

Director Psychopathic Institute of the Juvenile Court of Chicago

The main trend of our findings and the outlook now, after five years’ study of offenders in connection with courts, is requested. It is plain that in a short paper only a few of the more prominent points can be touched. We must leave analyses and adequate descriptions for our larger publications. However, we can here discuss some of the outcomes and limitations of applied methods. In this summary fashion, taking stock may be wise just at this time, when the practice of psychology is beginning to be exploited similarly to the practice of medicine. Also, lack of knowledge in many quarters of this new work and perhaps, the recent statement of a well-known clinical psychologist to the effect that psychology (or at least he says pseudopsychology) can render no aid in the courts, call for review of the facts.

Concerning the part that psychology in its practical, applied, clinical aspects should play in the court work, we may consider the following. View it as you may, there is no escape from the basic fact that conduct, social behavior, is a product of the mental life of the individual. The most direct driving forces of misconduct therefore are very properly to be regarded as material for study which comes well within the province of the science of mental life. (It must have been this which led the great jurist and criminalist, Gross, to state that psychological valuations must ultimately become the basis of all criminal law.) An individual differential psychology is involved which requires knowledge of the bearings which many varieties of mental conditions have upon action.

At the beginning of our work, we were advised by the most eminent psychologists that the field was virgin. Everywhere we were told that the use of the standard apparatus of the laboratory, the ergograph, plethsygmograph, the chronoscope, all had no bearing on our problem, for the results from none of them had been found to be correlated with any traits or conditions which were of peculiar significance in offenders. Many hopes that had been expressed by those who ardently desired the rapid practical extension of psychology had not borne fruition. We were told that methods must be worked and normal sought out. In other words, it was deliberately stated by many, that neither classical nor experimental psychology had as yet anything to offer for dealing with this human problem. To introduce the usual and often complicated devices of the laboratory, which are for measuring and discriminating the simpler elements of mental life, would be, it was said, to delude ourselves and be in the position of misleading others. In accordance with our appreciation of this consideration we have all along proceeded by methods which seem to have in them the greatest proportion of common sense, and to be most likely to show correlation between offending careers and characteristics possibly at the root of criminalistic tendencies.

Moreover, as time has gone on we have become more and more convinced that those who study offenders should seek not only for peculiarities and disabilities, correlated with tendencies to offend, but also for potentialities, for special abilities which might be utilized for educational or occupational success. To grade the delinquent downwards is not sufficient. There may be the possibility of constructive work with him. As a matter of fact, some of the most encouraging results of our own efforts have come through the discovery that the offender was suited for something which he had never had the chance of doing, and that a corresponding adjustment of his affairs brought cessation of delinquencies. This has been even true with certain types of defectives.

Early in working with our cosmopolitan population, (and to a less extent the trouble would have shown itself among those of one language) we saw that any method of mental evaluation which was based largely upon language tests, whether or not given by such a questionaire method as that of Binet was quite unfair. Language, our universal method of communication, does not cover all the social graces, all the social values, nor does adeptness in the use of it mean unusual general ability. In fact, nothing has been any more striking in our findings than that some otherwise normal individuals have special defects for language, and that some general defectives have such powers in manipulating words that pass everywhere, even in courts, as normal and even bright. It was soon felt that over and beyond tests which involve the medium of communication, it would be more profitable to observe a performance with concrete material which possibly might be arranged to measure some of the socially most valuable mental qualities.

Such performance tests have had a great growth in these five years, as emanating from several centers, until at present they are quite widely used. For work with offenders, there is at present a wide range of tests to choose from. For practical clinical work even more tests are desirable, and it may be that some of those now used will be gradually discarded and replaced by others. It stands out very clearly that what one would like to know particularly about offenders is how they grade, not only in general intelligence, but also on tests which may possibly evaluate the powers of apperception, of mental representation, of self-control, of the ability to learn by experience, and so on. Defects along these lines seem likely to stand in much greater correlation to delinquent tendencies than any other we could name. Special educational and industrial disabilities may make for social failure and so may indirectly lead also to delinquency. It is usually not difficult to ascertain the nature of these defects. A few steps towards discovery of vocational aptitudes can also be made by the use of tests.

We still think that the early advice to keep our testing methods simple and direct was thoroughly sound. It is evident that we can use with scientific safety the Binet scale for grouping young children and defectives up to the level of 10 years. Beyond this, by using a wide range of other tests, we can discriminate other subnormal groups who are either defective in general or in special abilities.

In the present state of our knowledge concerning methods discretion is needed in the selection of tests. Those primarily adapted to one group may not be valid for another social or age group. We have just finished an interesting comparison of the results of a certain performance test in which college young women did worse on the average than younger persons. We have all too little proof that tests worked up for children are equally valid for adults. It is proposed that we render decisions upon, for instance, findings by the Binet tests, and yet it does not seem likely by the sort of results we ourselves have been getting that they could be as freely applied to adults as to children for the purposes of social diagnosis, of discriminating those who are bound to be unsuccessful. We must remember that no one as yet has given us the results of these tests as applied to hundreds of ditch diggers, or section hands, who in their lowly spheres form most useful members of society.

When it comes to the interpretation of tests we need to exercise much discretion. It is most dangerous to proceed to render diagnosis or prognosis without knowledge of the individual’s background in heredity, developmental history and social environment. Such items as previous illnesses, present physical condition, debilitating habits, and educational opportunities need to be noted. In our work the question of epileptic variations alone is frequently before us. We see very clearly that grave injustice to the situation may be done without taking such possible features of the case into account.

Very different phases of psychological work with offenders properly are taken up from the viewpoint of human conduct in general being the province of the student of human life. Quite the minority of offenders show mental peculiarities which can be learned by testing and then related to their delinquencies. Let us look at some comparisons of offenders as we have grouped them by most careful study. Our court work has been in the main to see the problem cases. Undoubtedly most of the suspected psychotic or defective cases have been selected and brought for study. We have made a series of 1000 recidivists, repeated offenders, the average age of whom is about 15 years. These have been graded by mental tests most carefully and we have found the following:

	Per cent.
Considerably above ordinary in ability	3
Ordinary or fair in ability	55
Poor in ability	9
Mentally dull, but suffering from defective physical conditions, or disease, or bad habits, which may be the cause of the dullness	8
Sub-normal mentally, but not strictly feebleminded	8
Feebleminded (moron grade)	9
Feebleminded (imbecile grade)	1
Psychoses, ranging from well marked cases of insanity to temporary, but well-marked mental aberrations	7

I have found in various parts of the country considerable doubt expressed in regard to various statements which have been made of the proportions of the feebleminded which probably would be found by studying juvenile offenders. Teachers, judges, and probation officers have scouted the idea that there was upwards of 25 per cent. feebleminded among the children which come before a Juvenile court. Our own long investigation would certainly show otherwise. But of course we have never seen all of the thousands of children which come into the Chicago court yearly, so we have never been able to definitely answer the question of just what proportion is mentally defective.

This year I have asked the assistant director of the Institute, Miss Bronner, to undertake at regular periods cross-section studies of the population temporarily held in the Detention Home. These probably would average lower than if one could see every case which was brought into court, for frequently the most normal children who have been engaged in a single offense are not brought into the Home. The results which she is obtaining I shall merely hint at, but they serve to show that the psychological study of delinquency involves very much more than the discrimination of the feebleminded.

Any one who observed the considerable proportion of 7th and 8th grade and high school girls and boys who become severely delinquent will not be surprised at our findings. At least 91 per cent. of the girls and 84 per cent. of the boys have been found so far to group normal mentally, if we take the 12 year old tests of Binet as a standard. Now, as a matter of fact, I am not at all inclined without further investigation to denominate anyone as mentally defective who can not pass the 12 year test, because of the obvious weakness of these particular five tests for judging such an important point. But still we have been willing to place this criticism for the moment aside. There are several details of this given study which might be interesting to discuss, but this will be done elsewhere.

The above statements are not offered so much in opposition to other estimates of the proportion of defectives among offenders as to show the possible variation of findings in different situations where delinquents may be seen, and to show the nature of the work of the psychologist in courts. We can easily see why institutions for delinquents contain a greater proportion of mental defectives than is found in court work, for obviously the brighter ones are handled under probation, are found positions and succeed better on the outside because they have more foresight and learn better by experience. It may be that a larger percentage of the defectives will be found in studying older groups in court work. Perhaps the brighter individuals cease earlier to be offenders. I await with interest comparative findings from the newly established municipal court psychopathic institutes, in Boston and in Chicago. But of course fair general statistics can never be made without covering an unselected series of court cases, such as we have recently undertaken.

We must not find reason from the above figures to underestimate the exceedingly important problem of feebleminded offenders. From their ranks one has to come to know some of the most frequent repeaters, some of the worst teachers of vice, and even some of the most adept in such skilled criminalistic occupations as burglary. To answer the problem of their care would be to relieve a strain on society that is not even suggested by a statement of their proportionate numbers among offenders. No one has been more surprised than we ourselves to find the extent to which morons are actively engaged in criminalistics, and are even definitely the instructors of others. The general notion that this class is merely easily led is altogether erroneous.

The extent of our findings of a single disease, namely epilepsy, among our repeated offenders we have often commented on. We need only to mention that about 7 per cent. have been found afflicted with various forms of this trouble. After all, this is only what might have been expected from similar observations of others elsewhere. The psychic manifestations of this disease make the victim a fit subject of study by the psychopathologist.

Many of our interests have centered about the problems of adolescence. We all know that criminalistic tendencies, those which perhaps control the career of a life time, nearly always first show themselves before the 19th or 20th year. The physiological aspects of this period are the ones that have been most frequently dwelled on, but for our purposes they may be ignored except as they influence the psyche. Overgrowth and restlessness and other phenomena at this time do not directly create criminalism. They have first to effect the mental life which directs action. We have found a fair field for investigation here, and one that opens up whole vistas of possible usefulness. Various new points of departure for legal procedure are to be developed from data gathered concerning this period of life, not the least of which is criticism of that strange arbitrary discrimination under the law which says that boys at 17 and girls at 18 are suddenly responsible, mentally formed, able to properly care for themselves, when a few minutes or days previously they were not. Our studies show that these age limits were not based on practical observations of human beings.

Not the least interesting and therapeutically important part of psychological study of offenders is ascertainment of the mental mechanisms and mental content which stand in relation to delinquency. However it may be with older persons, and such experienced men as Parker in New York suggested that with adults this is a rich field for endeavor, we have studied many cases of criminalistic tendency in young people in which the whole trouble centered about some psychically untoward experience or some mental conflict. From this was developed a definite antisocial grudge, or at least an antisocial attitude. These cases, well understood, present some of the most curable criminalistic causes.

We must pass with bare mention such data as those on obsessional mental imagery and the formation of mental habits, both of which psychical phenomena play a considerable part in driving towards delinquency. To appreciate what sets the mental machinery turning out antisocial deeds we have to dig deep into many human experiences and many mental activities.

It was easily to be seen at the beginning of the work that there would be value in both extensive and intensive studies. The former would give a survey of the field which might lead to establishment of definite knowledge of the larger needs of the situation, would perhaps point the way to better legislation and public provision for various classes of offenders. The intensive work would furnish better understanding of types and the possibilities of their treatment. Then we soon realize that the careful and prolonged study of individual offenders was a rational preliminary to working up statistics from which general conclusions could be safely drawn. Time has justified this opinion. Nothing is rasher than to make general statements about social needs upon the basis of tests, observations and figures that have not been proved to solve the point at issue.

As an incident to the work with offenders the psychologist in court is occasionally asked about the reliability of witnesses. We have been gathering data upon this point in hundreds of cases by some tests, and find the matter a very difficult one to generalize upon. In this we agree with various foreign students of the subject. The ability to be a good witness is a highly individual matter, and frequently involves the conditions of a given occasion, upon which tests do not throw any light. Occasionally from psychological study one can render a strong positive or negative opinion concerning individual capacities, but much more frequently it seems to us that no safe opinion can be rendered.

We would still maintain, as we ever have done, that the greatest hope for amelioration of the heavy burden of delinquency is in very early studies and early understandings of individual cases. Not only for scientific purposes but also for practical treatment the young individual with delinquent tendencies is best handled. Not entirely, since some social offences may first arise in late adolescence, but in a large share of cases some of the most valuable criminological work can be done by specialists in child study. Even in early periods of life intensive studies must be made, especially of children of the psychopathic type. We are more than glad to see the purpose all over the country.

One word more about method. Those who early suggested to us that intensive, continued study of a dozen offenders of a dozen different types would be worth more than a thousand short examinations spoke from a strong standpoint. Continuation studies are most valuable. They are necessary not only for giving understandings of types, but also for so understanding the individual that proper social adjustment of his case can be made. Our work shows plainly that except in the case of the grossly defective a short cross-section study is absolutely inadequate for the work in hand, namely, scientific treatment of the offender.

As we continue to see it, then, the purpose of psychological work with offenders is nothing more or less than the understanding of the causes of misconduct. By no other methods will such causes be known, and those who fail to reckon with the fundamental psychical conditions and processes which underly delinquency will never get far in developing better methods of treatment. Psychology in this field is perfectly willing to be judged by results, and that is the best self-recommendation that it can offer.

The application of well-rounded and safe psychological studies in court work (not the pseudo-psychology that our friends decry) offers to the law the important addition of a scientific method. It presumes to gather in all the available facts that bear on the conduct in question, to set down opinions of diagnosis and prognosis, and then to follow these up in connection with any treatment given to see how correct they may have been, and to offer the chance of such readjustment as may be necessary. There is a direct study, then, of predictability. Now this is exactly the method of every science that aims at self-improvement. Unfortunately, this scientific endeavor at self-improvement has heretofore not been the standpoint of the law. Nothing has been any more striking to us than our observations on this point. Now through the opening avenue of practical studies of mental life and conduct applied to offenders in connection with court proceedings, we see every reason to believe that the outlook may be much better for dealing with the whole problem of delinquency and crime.