Frankfurt a. M. in Germany seems to have been the first to provide a specialized observation cottage for uncertain cases among children. This was established in 1900 and is much used by the juvenile court. Although it has a separate building and an isolated division of the grounds it is, however, connected with the local hospital for the insane. An improvement in this respect was made with the first provincial school for psychopathic children under compulsory training established near Leipzig at Kleinmeusdorf. This serves also as a distribution station and has two observation divisions through which all fürsorge children in the province pass. Only the psychopathic cases remain indefinitely. Detention homes for juvenile delinquents in this country quite generally are used for temporary quarters for cases to be observed, although these are not isolated from the other children. If an entirely separate observation institution is not possible, a more definitely recognized probationary period for observation of the uncertain cases should be arranged within other institutions. The efforts for clearing-houses for mental defectives such as that in New York City and the Ohio Bureau of Juvenile Research will help to distribute individuals to their proper institutions. The ideal is a separate observation home where all cases in which the question of mental deficiency and mental disease is raised may be sent before the individual is labeled. The effect of commitment to an institution for the feeble-minded, insane, or delinquent can be guarded against much better if the observation home is entirely isolated from all other institutions. The separate institution, however, is more difficult to obtain than a separate division or cottage in an existing institution. The latter forms a valuable intermediate step and is better than merely giving uncertain cases additional attention when other duties permit.
As a matter of legal procedure, diagnosis raises the troublesome question of expert advice in court. Two decisions have to be made about each case. First, is the individual deficient enough to justify isolation or guardianship? Second, considering the means of care available in the particular community, how should the deficient be cared for? The first is primarily a question which requires expert knowledge in mental development and should be so handled. The second decision requires knowledge about the individual's home and about the facilities for guardianship or isolation. It should be left with the authorities thus informed. This will usually be the court unless there is a commissioner or a committee especially charged with this duty.
An important advance in the legal definition of criminal responsibility of deficients should be made by avoiding all subtle questions of psychological analysis such as would be involved in deciding, for example, under the New York statute whether the accused “was laboring under such a defect of reason as not to know the nature and quality of the act he was doing or know the nature of the act as wrong.” Obsolete legal descriptions could easily be cleared away by adopting the statement of the law suggested by the Committee of the Institute of Criminal Law and Criminology for criminal responsibility and insanity. In substance such a law would then state that the accused was mentally deficient “so as not to be responsible ... for his acts or omissions at the time when the act or omission charged was made.” The New York law places an emphasis on knowledge which should be placed on will, only one feature of which is an understanding of the situation.
4. What should be the aim in the care and control of deficients and delinquents after diagnosis also depends upon a proper understanding of the causes of these conditions. We have summarized some of the best and most recent investigations in which a notable advance toward solving this problem has been made by means of the correlation method. This has proved to be a new and vigorous force for directing social progress. By no other method have we approached so near the solution of the cause of delinquency. It enables us to restate the problem of criminality as mainly a problem in the treatment of a hereditary criminal diathesis in which mental deficiency is the largest factor. These recent scientific measurements have deprived neither the eugenist nor the euthenist of the opportunity for service. There is plenty of congenial work to be done by those whose sympathies may exaggerate the influence of heredity, contagion, or training. As in the control of tuberculosis, so with the diathesis of delinquency, some effect is produced by predisposition, by training, and by external influences. Unless the present evidence, however, is outweighed by improved data obtained in the future, the most strategic point for attacking persistent delinquency is through the relation to deficiency, with heredity holding the heights.
With the immediate campaign against delinquency centered against the propagation of the social deficients, we have the atmosphere cleared so that it is possible to turn attention to the best means of attaining this end. Sterilization, isolation, or guardianship, by force or by consent, which of these methods promises best? This is not a question for detailed discussion here. We may, however, call attention to the strides that have been made by such legislation as the British Mental Deficiency Act of 1913 and to the summary of the laws of the several states in our country published at the University of Washington, Seattle. The question whether sterilization is desirable must at present be settled apparently by the judgment whether the benefit in reducing the propagation of the unfit outweighs the danger to morality through the temptation of known sterility. The question of isolation of the sexes by either sterilization or segregation resolves itself into the question of accuracy of diagnosis and prognosis. Our review of the uncertainties of diagnosis should make us cautious. When we consider the social survival of many of those trained in the public school classes for deficients and when a dozen girls discharged from the Massachusetts institution for the feeble-minded succeeded in getting along in society (164, p. 49), it would seem wise to place the emphasis on first isolating those about whose danger to the community through delinquency or propagation of deficiency there would be the least question. This would mean those of uncertain mentality who were already repeated delinquents or in imminent danger and those who were of the lowest grades of deficiency, not the morons who were of uncertain moral and mental ability. Among the clearly deficient there is no question but that the emphasis should be to isolate first the girls and women of child-bearing age, since their chance of obtaining mates is greater than that of the deficient males. With doubtful cases public guardianship, such as that provided by the British Mental Deficiency Act of 1913, affords a promising remedy. Even those who are of uncertain ability should, when in danger, be provided with whatever protection guardianship can give. In this connection a suggestion of Dr. Goddard in the Survey, March 2, 1912, may be utilized. A court in returning an individual who is of uncertain ability to his family or guardian may well warn them: “We shall leave him in your custody, but we insist that you shall care for him, shall be responsible for him throughout his life, shall see that he does not get into mischief, and above all that he does not become a parent. Whenever the time comes that we find you are incapable of performing or are neglecting this duty, then we shall take him and place him in a colony.”
The question where to isolate the deficient delinquent, whom Kuhlmann says is “equally well placed or misplaced in the institution for the feeble-minded and the reformatory,” ([140]) is answered in substance by Supt. Murdoch of the State Institution for the Feeble-Minded in Western Pennsylvania. He suggests that in large states the deficient delinquents might be cared for in an institution which should bear the same relation to the state institutions for the feeble-minded and the penal institutions as is now held by the asylums for the criminal insane. Where a separate institution is not possible the affiliation with the institutions for either the delinquents or the deficients may be tried by means of colonies especially set apart in them. In Massachusetts these divisions for the deficient delinquent are connected with the institutions for delinquents.
5. Turning to external influences upon delinquency, we find that their effect has been measured mainly in connection with the tendency to repeat criminal acts. It has been shown by Goring that even such important influences as the example of criminality in the home, kind and amount of schooling, irregularity of employment, alcoholism, size of family, low standard of living, early death of mother, etc., have generally been found not to increase notably the tendency to recidivism while they do correlate decidedly with deficiency. Nevertheless, it has not been determined whether these external factors may not have an important influence upon the first manifestation of the criminal diathesis even though they tend only slightly to increase recidivism. Should these external influences prove to be not more than a fifth as important as deficiency and heredity, which now seems to be indicated, we need to hunt for other outer influences which may really prove to be more important.
Among bad external influences as yet unmeasured is maladjustment to school among those of passable ability. We have given some evidence as to this which we found among a group of delinquent boys at a county farm school, when their test records were compared with their positions in school. As a possible serious source of delinquency, bad adjustment to school work should be studied further, since it is a matter that could be easily corrected by the assistance of special teachers. With the earlier discovery of deficient children by means of mental tests, it should also be possible more definitely to direct the training so as to build up resistance to worldly temptations. How much could be done in this direction we cannot yet say. We have undoubtedly wasted much effort in the past in trying to create intellectual capacity in those who are innately deficient in intellect. Fortunately we are now directing our attention to training them to acquire passable ability in simple occupations, or to adjust themselves to the life of a colony. In the education of the mentally weak the most promising field is undoubtedly with the conative cases with passable intellects. At Templin, outside of Berlin, there has been established the first home school devoted entirely to the training of such unstable and inert boys. This specialized institution for conative cases, which was founded by a philanthropic society at the suggestion of Prof. Thiedor Ziehen, marks a most important advance step in the problem of training the mentally deficient. The results of specific training for the social adjustment of the intellectually and of the volitionally deficient will be awaited with great interest.
6. Shall the public authorities have the power to compel isolation and special training at local or state schools? These powers have already been provided by laws in a number of states. Thus far the law has not outstripped scientific knowledge. How far the authorities should use their discretion under these laws to force isolation is a question which calls for the utmost good judgment on their part. In case the parents or guardians of the socially deficient can be convinced of the desirability of such isolation, this procedure is undoubtedly to be urged. When the guardian has once consented to the isolation of his charge, he should not be permitted to remove the individual from such care without the consent of the proper public authority, which would of course be reviewable in court. During this period of uncertainty as to the prognosis of social deficiency, such a procedure would perhaps be preferable to forced isolation in most cases, since the authorities might be less troubled by the frequent annoyance of legal actions begun by parents who had their children forcibly removed to institutions. In some states unscrupulous attorneys have deliberately stirred up parents to try to get back their children who had been taken away by force, thus seriously interfering with the administration of laws for compulsory isolation. Without the possibility of compulsory isolation of the socially deficient for an indefinite time, we shall perpetuate the disgraceful spectacle now observable in many states which cannot legally prevent a feeble-minded parent removing a feeble-minded girl from an institution to which she may be brought back a few years later with one or more illegitimate, feeble-minded children. Our legal omissions should not thus handicap the wisdom of society. The 1917 codification of the Minnesota laws relating to defective, delinquent and deficient children should be seen by those who are interested in the legal aspects of these questions. It was brought about by the Minnesota Child Welfare Commission, of which Judge Edward F. Waite was chairman.
7. In case we suddenly segregate for life all those who are so deficient that we are justified in isolating them, would that solve the problem of delinquency for the next generation? Although this would be the most important attack which could be made on the most important known cause of delinquency, we must still answer that the results would hardly be comparable with a jail delivery. There is nothing to be gained by turning our backs upon the facts. Goring has estimated that 7.2% of the male population of England and Wales commit crime before death. We could not possibly suppose that more than 1% of the male population could be justly isolated for deficiency. Even if all the deficients committed crime, at least six-sevenths of the criminals in these countries, about which we have the best means of estimating, are presumably individuals who could not be isolated for deficiency.