QUESTIONS ON PRODIGAL SONS AND DAUGHTERS
1. What has been the general trend of social ideal and practice in the treatment of the criminal and the vicious?
2. What part has the family played in restraint of evil tendency or in responsibility before the law for offences against social order?
3. What part should the family now play in these vital social matters?
4. What is "sentimentality" and what is "justice" in dealing with the prodigal?
5. What can be done through physical and mental examinations, by experts, of all children, to prevent development of criminality, vice, and waywardness?
6. In 1724 the English law held any one legally responsible for action subversive of law and order unless he was "totally deprived of his understanding and memory and doth not know what he is doing, no more than an infant, than a brute or a wild beast." Since 1843, the criterion of responsibility under the law is "knowledge of what is right or wrong in the particular case." Following the same line of change, our statutes now ask, in addition, if the person on trial is generally competent to understand and to obey social rules of conduct. Is this trend toward the lessening or toward the increase of crime and vice?
7. What does social well-being require shall be done for and with those proved incapable of social habits?
8. Head "The Socially Inadequate; How Shall We Designate and Sort Them?" by Harry H. Laughlin, Carnegie Institution, Cold Spring Harbor, Long Island, in American Journal of Sociology, July, 1921. This is an attempt to introduce a blanket term under which feeble-minded; insane; criminalistic, including delinquent and wayward; epileptic; inebriate, including drug habitues; diseased, including tuberculous, lepers, and others with chronic infectious diseases; blind, including all of seriously impaired vision; deaf, including those with seriously impaired hearing; deformed, including the crippled; and dependent, including orphans, old folks, soldiers and sailors in "homes," chronic charity-aided folk, paupers, and ne'er-do-wells, may be listed. This article attempts to make a classification inclusive, yet subject to minute subheading, which may make reports more definite in listing human beings.
Is such an attempt wise, and if so, how would each member of this group classify the "socially inadequate?"