TABLE XI. Frequency of Tested Deficiency Among Over 9000 Delinquents.
Comparison of the frequency of tested deficiency among objectively selected groups of delinquents reinterpreted on roughly the same borderlines, which are often not those used by the original investigators. “Presumably deficient” in the table corresponds roughly to about the lowest 0.5 per cent., and the doubtful group to about the next 1.0 per cent. in the general population
| Percentages | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Group and Investigator | No. of Cases | Presumably deficient | Doubtful | Both |
| Women and Girls | ||||
| State Institutions | ||||
| Penitentiaries | ||||
| Illinois Penitentiary (L. E. and G. Ordahl) Negro | 26 | 15 | 27 | 42 |
| Illinois Penitentiary (L. E. and G. Ordahl) White | 23 | 9 | 30 | 39 |
| Reformatories | ||||
| Bedford Reformatory, N. Y. (Weidensall) | 200 | 38 | 37 | 75 |
| Bedford Reformatory, N. Y. (M. R. Fernald) | 100 | 41 | 24 | 65 |
| Western House of Refuge, N. Y. (Herrick) | 194 | (25) | (14) | (39) |
| Training Schools | ||||
| State Home for Girls, N. J. (Otis) Partially selected | 172 | (68) | ||
| Girls Industrial Home, Ohio (Renz) | 100 | (29) | (20) | (49) |
| State Industrial School and Florence Crittenden Home, Colo. (Bluemel) | 50 | (48) | ||
| N. Y. Training School for Girls (Hall) | 607 | (20) | (28) | (48) |
| Girls Industrial Home, Ohio (Haines) | 329 | 21 | 17 | 38 |
| Illinois State Training School for girls (L. E. and G. Ordahl) | 432 | 13 | 22 | 35 |
| Industrial School for Girls, Mich. (Crane) | 386 | 14 | 20 | 34 |
| California School for Girls (G. M. Fernald) | 124 | 19 | ||
| County and City | ||||
| Sex Offenders | ||||
| Sex Offenders not under arrest, Albany, N. Y. (McCord) | 88 | 32 | 35 | 67 |
| Unmarried mothers, Cincinnati General Hospital (Weidensall) | (48) | |||
| Professional prostitutes, Mass. (State Commission) | 300 | 27 | 33 | 60 |
| Prostitutes in a segregated district in a Virginia City (State Commission) | 120 | 36 | 20 | 56 |
| Juveniles | ||||
| Cook County Juvenile Detention Home, Chicago (Bronner) | 133 | 11 | ||
| Men and Boys | ||||
| State Institutions | ||||
| Penitentiaries | ||||
| Illinois Penitentiary (Ordahl) | 51 | (25) | (11) | (36) |
| Ohio Penitentiary (Haines) | 87 | 18 | ||
| State Prison, Mass. (Rossy) | 300 | 16 | ||
| Reformatories | ||||
| State Reformatory, Minnesota (Green) | 370 | 13 | 22 | 35 |
| State Reformatory, Iowa (Report) | 996 | 20 | 15 | 35 |
| Training Schools | ||||
| Indiana Boys School (Hickman) | 229 | 30 | 18 | 48 |
| Boys Industrial School, Ohio (Haines) | 671 | 15 | 27 | 42 |
| State Industrial School, Colo. (Bluemel) | 50 | (18) | ||
| Whittier State School, Calif. (Williams) | 215 | (14) | (18) | (32) |
| State School for Boys, Ill. (Ordahl) | 341 | (11) | (20) | (31) |
| Industrial School, Mich. (Crane) | 801 | 6 | 15 | 21 |
| State Industrial School, N. H. (Streeter) | 147 | (37+) | ||
| Texas State Juvenile Training School (Kelley) | 296 | 8 | 9 | 17 |
| County and City | ||||
| Jails and Workhouses | ||||
| Repeaters in jail in a Virginia city (State Commission) Negro | 50[[27]] | 48 | 20 | 68 |
| Repeaters in jail in a Virginia city (State Commission) White | 50[[27]] | 36 | 10 | 46 |
| Chicago House of Correction (Kohs) | 335 | 21 | 29 | 50 |
| Columbus, O., Workhouse, 28 Negroes (Gilliland) | 100 | (14) | (17) | (31) |
| Juveniles | ||||
| Newark Detention Home, N. J. (Gifford and Goddard) | 100 | 66[[28]] | ||
| Allegheny County Juveniles Detention Home, Pa. (Mathews) | 125 | 29[[28]] | 26[[28]] | 55[[28]] |
| Boys cared for by the county (Stenquist, Thorndike and Trabue) Delinquents | 104 | 11 | 17 | 28 |
| Cook County Detention Home, Chicago (Bronner) | 337 | 7 | ||
| Glen Lake Farm School for Boys, Hennepin County, Minn. (Miner) | 123 | 2 | 5 | 7 |
| Probationers, Juvenile Court (Bluemel) | 100 | (6) | ||
Parentheses indicate percentages or selection on a somewhat different basis.
1. Intellectual deficiency as a social problem is undoubtedly at present most serious among women and girls who are sex offenders. It is this fact which accounts for the excessive amount of deficiency found in the industrial schools for girls, and the reformatories for women. It is not necessary to repeat the discussion of the reasons for this which were considered at the close of the studies of women delinquents. The most closely corresponding class of male delinquents is probably the “vags,” as Aschaffenburg suggests (68, p. 162). The vagrants form a much smaller portion of the inmates of the institutions for male delinquents than do the prostitutes in the institutions for women and girls. The little evidence we have indicates, moreover, that as a class the ne'er-do-wells average higher in ability than the prostitutes. They are, probably, a more mixed group. As reported by Terman ([57]), Mr. Kollin found among 150 “hoboes” at least 20 per cent. belonged to the “moron grade of mental deficiency.” * * * “The above findings have been fully paralleled by Mr. Glen Johnson and Professor Eleanor Rowland, of Reed College, who tested 108 unemployed charity cases in Portland, Oregon” (57, p. 18). Since these investigators used the Stanford Scale, the borderline was probably set at the position where it would exclude about 1% of the ordinary population, a little more conservative than our doubtful group. We should know more about deficiency among the typical “Weary Willies,” since it is likely that courts are accustomed to assume that vagrancy is a habit which can be corrected by a term in the workhouse. There is little doubt that mental deficients fill up the recruiting stations for the prostitutes and “vags.” It is with these classes that the most intensive social work should be done in the campaign for early isolation of the unfit.
2. Institutions which care for the same type of delinquents show pronounced variation in the amount of tested deficiency. Compare the Indiana Boys' School with the Michigan Industrial School for Boys. Thirty per cent. tested presumably deficient in the former as against 6% in the latter; or 48% in the former and 21% in the latter tested below our borderline for the presumably passable intellects. This difference can hardly be explained by errors in testing. It marks a significant difference between the care of the mentally deficient in the two states. The difference in the success of states in isolating their feeble-minded is best shown by comparing the Newark and Pittsburgh institutions for boys from the juvenile courts on the one hand, and the local groups of boy delinquents from Hennepin County, Minn., and Cook County, Ill., on the other. In one case over 60% and in the other less than 10% were below the same borderline. In other words, the courts in Newark and Pittsburgh were deliberately sending mental deficients to their local institutions for delinquents because there was no better place available, not because they mistook deficiency for delinquency. The better diagnosis of deficiency by test criteria is, however, the first step in demonstrating this situation so that public sentiment for an adequate state care for the feeble-minded may be in accord with a conservative statement of the present conditions. Moreover, we have made real progress when we have demonstrated objectively that the difference in the character of the inmates of corresponding institutions is not a mere matter of opinion.
3. Unfortunately for social reform, a wholly incorrect impression seems to have spread abroad that half of the delinquents in juvenile courts are feeble-minded. Exaggeration of the condition retards rather than assists a sane public policy regarding the indefinite isolation of those demonstrably deficient by psychological tests. The mistaken impression apparently started with the study of Goddard and Gifford as to the condition found among boys at the Newark Detention Home. Two-thirds of these boys tested approximately below our borderline for clearly passable intellects. I should not be inclined seriously to question calling these two-thirds in the Newark Home feeble-minded, since I am willing to class those in our doubtful group as feeble-minded provided that they are persistent delinquents. The deductions which were drawn from this startling discovery seem, however, to have slipped into the literature of the subject without anybody noting that they were unjustified by the facts. In the first place the condition at Newark Detention Home may reflect a peculiar local situation analogous to that at Pittsburgh in which deficient boys had to be cared for in the detention home because no other institution was available for these feeble-minded. Under these recognized local conditions, it would seem that the general situation might be better represented by the conditions of deficiency found since then in Cook and Hennepin counties than by the conditions at Newark. We at least know that Newark and Pittsburgh represent special and not ordinary conditions among those in local detention homes, unless the situation is very different in the East from that in the West.
Besides regarding the condition in the Newark Detention Home as representative of the general condition in detention homes elsewhere, it was argued that the condition in the detention home represented the condition among the ordinary cases of delinquents before the juvenile courts. The groups in detention homes are undoubtedly extreme both as to the seriousness of their delinquency and as to their deficiency. Since Goddard published his paper following the Newark study considerable additional evidence has been made available. But even without this contradictory data, it was a big jump to assume that the condition in the local detention home represented the frequency of deficiency among the ordinary cases which come before the juvenile courts.
Either Dr. Goddard overlooked this distinction between serious offenders who are often repeaters and the ordinary offenders, or he took the questionable position that the difference was unimportant. On the basis of the tests of cases in the detention home in Newark, which we have quoted, he says that “by actual test 66% of the children in the Juvenile Courts of Newark are feeble-minded.” Again after quoting the results of examinations of delinquents at several institutions, he says: “Suppose we take the very lowest figure that any of these studies suggests, namely 25%, and see for a moment where it leads us. Twenty-five per cent. of the children who come before the Juvenile Court[A] are feeble-minded. The figures cannot be less than that” ([19]).
This paper was subsequently referred to by Dr. Fernald, physician at the Massachusetts Reformatory, as follows: “It has been found by the most eminent research workers in this field that probably not less than 25% of the criminals who come before our courts are feeble-minded and that a much larger percentage of the children brought before the Juvenile Court are defective” ([103]).[[29]]