While this lack of adjustment is undoubtedly the most pressing training problem connected with juvenile delinquency, we must not expect that when it is solved we shall have eliminated the problem of mental backwardness of delinquents as a class. The most that we could expect from perfect adjustment of the school work to mental ability would be that the average amount of school retardation for the group would be materially reduced. How much retardation in school relative to the life-ages would still remain, cannot be determined on account of the uncertainty of the tests for older ages and the factor of volition. For the mentally deficient pupils still remaining behind the regular pupils it is necessary to provide other special classes. In these classes or schools the feeble-minded children would remain for their entire school course.
That the correction of the lack of adjustment is a much more agreeable and hopeful task than the care for deficients is shown by the facts regarding the detention home group in Table IX. There is at least the possibility that 10 of the school laggards in this group of serious delinquents might be brought up to a satisfactory grade. Discount this prospect as you may, it is still to be compared with the fact that no actually feeble-minded boy can ever, by special instruction, be brought up to a satisfactory school grade. Moreover, we might expect that 30 of the 84 laggards might, by special help, catch up one or more grades.
That the correction of lack of school adjustment is a bigger problem in connection with juvenile delinquency than the detection and isolation of the mentally unfit can only be said in relation to the numbers affected. Taking the lowest estimate of those in the detention home group out of adjustment with their school environment it was at least 30, while only 9 of that group fell below the borderline of passable intellects and only 2 were surely feeble-minded. If one guessed as we have on the basis of school position that a maximum 6% of the ordinary juvenile delinquents in Minneapolis might be feeble-minded, who would venture to guess that ill-adjustment of school to mental ability affects so small a proportion? On the other hand one feeble-minded person, through the transmission of his deficiency, may, perhaps, do more damage to society than many intelligent delinquents. Who shall say? Certainly both the isolation of the feeble-minded and the adjustment of school training are vitally important problems in the care of juvenile delinquents today. Nobody can say that one is more important than the other except from a special point of view. From the eugenics standpoint feeble-mindedness is more important; from the point of view of the numbers affected and the skill required for training the child, there can be little question but that the correction of bad adjustment to school environment is the bigger problem. When one considers how much of the child's time is spent out of school, at home, with playfellows, or at work we cannot be sure that other external influences might not ultimately be found to be more important in connection with juvenile delinquency than either the school life or mental incapacity. The further consideration of the causes of delinquency we shall now make the subject of a broader inquiry.
[32]. Mental ages VI and VII regarded as satisfactory for the first grade, etc.
CHAPTER XI. DEFICIENCY AS A CAUSE OF DELINQUENCY
In a preceding chapter we have shown the frequency of tested deficiency among various types of delinquents. We may now further consider the significance of this association of delinquency with deficiency. The best plan for discovering its meaning is provided by the technical method of correlation. The data in the published reports of the score or more of investigations which I have reported is wholly inadequate for following out this method. We must, therefore, for the present content ourselves with noting what has been discovered by the better analysis of similar data which was supplemented by the necessary information as to the distribution of the different types of crime in the corresponding general populations. To this we can add certain correlations in connection with the small Minneapolis group of tested juvenile delinquents.
We are indeed fortunate to have the fundamental work of Dr. Charles Goring on “The English Convict,” from which to formulate a point of view regarding the relation of deficiency and delinquency. This work represents ten years labor in making observations, collecting, tabulating, and statistically evaluating data on 3000 convicted men, who were found in the English convict prisons where they had been sent after conviction in the higher courts because guilty of grave or repeated offenses. It was carried out with the co-operation of a corps of workers who had the help of Professor Karl Pearson and his assistants at the Biometric Laboratory of the University of London, in the statistical reduction of the almost overwhelming mass of data. By the large use of partial correlation the relative influence of various factors upon criminality was investigated as it never had been before. It is, of course, not possible to reproduce here the conclusions of this monumental work which should be made more widely available in the libraries of this country. We shall, however, select certain conclusions which bear most directly upon our problem and which rest upon well established statistical deductions, and compare them with a few other studies which have contributed interesting side lights upon the causes of delinquency.
A. The Chances of the Mentally Deficient Becoming Delinquent.
“Every feeble-minded person is a potential criminal,” says Goddard in his work on Feeble-Mindedness (112, 514), and this sentiment finds an echo in the emotions of many social workers. On the other hand we have the careful work of Bronner in which she compares by their test records a group of delinquent women with groups selected from night classes and the servant class who had never been known to be immoral. On the average she finds that the delinquents do not test below her servant group. She says: