TREATMENT OF THE MENTAL DEFECTIVE WHO IS ALSO DELINQUENT
DR. HENRY H. GODDARD, VINELAND, NEW JERSEY
Twenty-five per cent. of delinquents are mentally defective. While we have no absolute statistics, there are many indications that this is a safe estimate. All mental defectives would be delinquents in the very nature of the case, did not some one exercise some care over them.
There is only one possible answer to the question, “What is to be done with the feebleminded person who is delinquent?” He must be cared for, but he must be cared for in a place where we care for irresponsibles. The jail or prison or reformatory, is not for him, neither must he be turned loose on the streets or sent back to the home and environment in which he has already become a delinquent.
In the present state of our laws and customs, delinquency is the one means by which we are able to get hold of a certain type of mental defective and provide for him as he should be provided for. Many of these feebleminded of the moron type come from homes or have attained to such an age or position that we have no way of getting hold of them until they do some wrong and come under the head of delinquents. But when that has happened and we have them where we can prescribe for them, it is worse than folly for us to let them go and turn them back into their former environment where they must only repeat the offense or even commit a worse one.
We must have enough institutions or colonies for the feebleminded to care for all the feebleminded delinquents at least. As it is today, even under the best conditions, many a judge recognizes mental defect in the cases that come before him and would gladly send the child to an institution for the feebleminded, but there is no room, and so he is compelled to utilize some makeshift which oftentimes is worse than nothing at all.
But the broadest treatment of this topic must go farther back than the question of what to do with these feebleminded persons who have already become delinquent. We must consider the cause here as we are trying to do everywhere in modern methods, and treat the cause rather than trying to cure. In other words, the feebleminded person should be taken care of before he becomes a delinquent. Here the first problem is diagnosis. How shall we recognize this feebleminded child of high type, this moron grade, as we now call them?
Until recently we have been more or less helpless in this matter, but now we may say with perfect assurance that the Binet tests of intelligence are entirely satisfactory and can be relied on to pick out the mental defective at least up to the age of twelve years. The public schools will be the clearing house for all these cases, they may there be tested and their mental condition found out, and they can then be cared for as condition leads. We have too long attempted to treat all children alike, whether in the public school or before the courts. When we have learned to discriminate and recognize the ability of each child and place upon him such burdens and responsibilities only as he is able to bear, then we shall have largely solved the problem of delinquency.