Deficiency and Delinquency: An Interpretation of Mental Testing

by James Burt Miner

The 1912 report of the London County Council ([144]) covers those who left its special schools for mentally defective children during the years 1908-1912 inclusive. These schools have accommodation for about 1% of the elementary school enrollment. Of 2010 children who left these schools during these five years, and who were still alive, 1357 were employed and 311 more employed when last heard from, a total of 79% employed at last accounts. Those out for five years show about the same proportion employed. This is a more favorable showing and fairly in line with the results of other European help-schools. The average weekly wages of those employed ranged from 4 s. 6 d. for those just out to 10 s. 10 d. for those leaving five years before. A considerable proportion who live at home thus have been meeting their necessary living expenses as the result of this special training and subsequent assistance.

Dr. Walter E. Fernald reported to the British Royal Commission on the Care and Control of the Feeble-Minded concerning the inmates of the institutions for feeble-minded in the United States. These institutions receive a much lower grade of cases on the whole than the local help-schools abroad: (83, Vol. VIII, p. 159)

“Some of the institutions where only the brightest class of imbeciles are received, and where the system of industrial training has been very carefully carried out, report that from 20% to 30% of the pupils are discharged as absolutely self-supporting. In other words at other institutions, where the lower grade cases are received, the percentage of cases so discharged is considerably less. It is safe to say that not over 10% to 15% of our inmates can be made self-supporting, in the sense of going out into the community and securing and retaining a situation, and prudently spending their earnings.... But it is safe to say that over 50% of the adults of the higher grade who have been under training from childhood are capable, under intelligent supervision, of doing a sufficient amount of work to pay for the actual cost of their support, whether in an institution or at home.”

The wages of the women at the Bedford Reformatory before entering prostitution as given by Davis (133, p. 210) have a direct bearing on the earning capacity of the higher grade feeble-minded. The Binet tests of Bedford women by Weidensall indicate that about 38% of the successive cases admitted to Bedford test in the lowest 0.5% intellectually, and 75% in the lowest 1.5% intellectually. Davis' table shows that for 110 whom she classes as mentally low grade cases at the reformatory, the median wage of those in domestic service, as claimed by the women, was nearly $4.50 before entering prostitution. These feeble-minded women, if their statements of earnings can be accepted, are therefore feeble-minded by reason of their low intelligence plus delinquency, and not by reason of inability to earn the necessities of life. The best of these mentally low grade cases earned as high as $5.00 in addition to board and lodging in domestic service and $25.00 outside of domestic service.

In this country we have fewer studies of the results of training the mentally retarded in special local classes and schools. Miss Farrell has made a preliminary report of 350 boys and girls out of the 600 children formerly in the ungraded classes in New York City during the preceding 8 years ([102]). Omitting seven whose status was unknown and 10 who had died, only 6% were known to have failed to survive socially with assistance. These were in penal or other institutions. On the other hand a strict analysis of her returns shows only 28% earning $5.00 a week or more and thus possibly surviving independently. Of the above group of 333, 86 were at home, 192 employed, 31 unemployed and 3 married.

In Detroit among 100 children over 16 years of age who had attended its special classes and been out of school not over 5 years, 27 had been arrested, but 39 of the boys had been at work and received an average wage of $7.00 per week, while 16 girls had averaged $3.75 in weekly wages, although few held their positions long ([97]).

Bronner ([6]) compared a random group of thirty delinquent women at the detention home maintained by the New York Probation Association with an intellectually similar group of 29 women all of whom had been earning their living in domestic service and none of whom had been “guilty of any known wrong doing.” The delinquents were 16 to 22 years of age while the servant group was somewhat older. Only two or three of the delinquent group were worse than the poorest of the servant group in any of the five intellectual tests, so that, if more than this number were intellectually deficient, they were no more deficient than those who had survived in society. No Binet scale records were published so that we have no means of determining how many of these delinquents might fall within either of our deficient groups.

The principal deduction from this evidence on the earning capacity of those of low intellectual grade is a caution against demanding the social isolation of all the intellectually weak until we have more definite information as to what portion of them are able to live moral lives, as well as earn their living with social assistance, without being cared for entirely in isolation colonies. That a significant number of the lowest 1.0% intellectually next above the lowest 0.5% have led moral lives and have shown considerable earning capacity after attending special schools, when they are given proper after-care, has probably been demonstrated. They should, therefore, be treated as an uncertain group whose feeble-mindedness would never be decided purely on the ground of the intellectual tests. Most of them will, however, probably be found mentally deficient enough to need at least social assistance and protection.

In concluding this summary on the estimates of the frequency of feeble-mindedness, it need only be added that so far as concerns the use of the percentage definition for fixing the borderline in any particular system of tests the percentages chosen are not essential to the plan. The principles of the method apply whatever percentages might be adopted. For such important purposes as the comparison of the relative frequency of deficiency in different social groups and harmonizing the investigations with different mental scales, agreement upon a particular percentage is not essential. In diagnosis, of course, it is a matter of fundamental importance in order that injustice may not be done individuals. For this reason the estimate should be conservative, possibly more conservative even than our tentative 0.5% at 15 years of age. Any investigator who disagrees with the above estimates of the degree of tested deficiency justifying isolation may substitute X per cent. with a doubtful region extending Y per cent. further. Provided such a census were legally authorized and funds available it would be not impossible to get a reliable determination by a house to house canvass showing the number of adult deficients, say 21 years of age, in typical communities, who were not able to survive socially without assistance. This number would then give the key for a conservative percentage and the movement for early care would be immensely advanced.

With the recent introduction of psychological tests into the cantonments of the national army, the goal of symptomatic borderlines as determined by objective tests seems to be almost at hand. Since the men are brought practically at random to the camps by the draft and are under military command, it may be possible to find out the social history of a large enough group at the lower limit of tested ability to establish the question of the necessary capacity for independent moral and social survival. These borderlines could then be transferred from the army tests to positions of equivalent difficulty in other test systems.