Institutional Figures Misleading.—However, significant as are these figures from institutions for delinquents, one should not be misled by them. They are undoubtedly not representative of offenders in general, but of a selected group of the most hopeless cases. In the first place the more capable individuals escape the dragnet which lands the defective delinquents in an institution, and furthermore, because of liberal systems of probation, only the more incorrigible or the very stupid make up the bulk of the population of such places. Miss Augusta F. Bronner, assistant director of the Psychopathic Institute of the Juvenile Court of Chicago, from a careful study of five hundred and five cases of delinquent boys and girls in the Detention Home, chosen with as little selection as possible, finds the proportion of mentally subnormal among them to be less than ten per cent.
Many Prisoners Mentally Subnormal.—Doctor Walter S. Fernald, of the Massachusetts School for Feeble-minded, estimates that “at least 25 per cent. of the inmates of our penal institutions are mentally defective.” Among the various available estimates at hand this seems to be a fairly conservative approximation. Hastings H. Hart points out that this calculation of 25 per cent. means that there are 20,000 adult defective delinquents in prison, and 6,000 youths in juvenile reformatories, or a total of 26,000 in custody in the United States.
The Inhibitions Necessary to Social Welfare Not Well Established in All.—But let us look at this matter of delinquency a little more in detail. In common with other living creatures mankind has two strongly predominating instincts without which there can be no prolonged individual or racial existence, namely, the self-preservative and the reproductive. Says Schiller: “While philosophers are disputing about the government of the world, Hunger and Love are performing the task.” Under self-preservative would be included everything pertaining to food, property and self-protection. In addition, however, man, together with certain other social animals, has developed a third set of activities or instincts—an impulsion toward the preservation of the community to which he belongs—and so far has this evolved in his case that it outranks in importance the other two. For the highest accomplishments and ideals of the race are in last analysis expressions of this social instinct. But with this system of mutual help comes the necessity of certain restraints, because for society to exist its members must impose upon themselves, or have imposed upon them, certain inhibitions of their self-preservative and reproductive instincts.
Being a late acquisition of the race and less firmly ingrained, the social instinct is not well established in all individuals. Some have it sufficiently strong to exercise of their own accord the necessary inhibitions of other instincts. Experience has shown that others, either through a lack or through a wrong cultivation of it, can not or will not do so unaided. For the latter, society has instituted certain conventions and the criminal law whereby through a system of restraints and punishments such an individual is held in check either by actual physical restraint of his property or person or through the powerfully inhibitive factors of shame or fear. Man as a normal member of society must constantly take heed of the physical, intellectual or moral danger the exercise of a given feeling, action or procedure on his part will bring to humanity, and govern himself accordingly.
But it is in just these very inhibitions that mental defectives are lacking. They are almost invariably anti-social types because they are unable to establish the personal abstentions which are necessary for the good of the community. While in the individual of innate normal mentality anti-social traits may have developed because of improper training or surroundings, in mentally defective types some factor or factors necessary to normality have been left out of their make-up and as a result they are often wholly lacking in social instincts or have these so feebly developed that education and exhortations toward social ideals are fruitless. We can not appeal successfully if there is nothing to appeal to; we can not develop something out of nothing.
The High-Grade Moron a Difficult Problem.—One great difficulty in identifying the high-grade morons who are a bountiful source of our criminals is our almost universal failure to recognize that a memory test alone is not sufficient to determine the mental responsibility of an individual. Not only memory, but judgment, will-power and perhaps, also, to a lesser degree, the powers of attention and concentration are all indispensable elements in the make-up of a normal individual. There are cases on record of imbeciles with prodigious memories, yet hopelessly incapable of caring for themselves or of respecting the rights of others. In fact certain types of morons, usually cunning, often prepossessing and superficially clever, are characterized by good memories and will moralize volubly, although their wills are too weak to inhibit impulses when they face temptation. It is obvious that just in proportion as the intelligence of the high-grade degenerate approaches normality and yet remains abnormal, the more dangerous he may become to society.
Degenerate Strains.—A number of family records are now available which show convincing evidence of the hereditary nature of a degeneracy which finds expression in pauperism, immorality and crime.
As has already been pointed out, there is reason to believe that much of this is based in some degree on feeble-mindedness. One of the most remarkable of these is the recent study on degeneracy by Goddard as set forth in his book called The Kallikak Family. The record is that of six generations of descendants from an original progenitor to whom the fictitious name of Kallikak has been assigned. This individual, descended from good stock, before his marriage met a feeble-minded girl by whom he became the father of a feeble-minded son. Later he married a normal woman by whom he had normal children. Thus from one normal father have sprung two lines of progeny, one vitiated with feeble-mindedness, the other normal. The comparison may be readily made by drawing up in parallel columns the data as follows:
| Line A | Line B | |
| In five generations 480 direct descendants from a normal father father and a feeble-minded mother have been accounted for as follows: | In five generations 496 descendants from the same normal father as in Line A and a normal mother have the following record: | |
| 143 known to be feeble-minded. | All but one of normal mentality. | |
| 291 mental status unknown or doubtful. | Two men known to be alcoholic. | |
| 36 illegitimate. | One case of religious mania. | |
| 33 sexually immoral, mostly prostitutes. 24 confirmed alcoholics. | Among the rest have been found nothing but good representative citizenship, numbering doctors, lawyers, educators, judges, traders, etc. | |
| 3 epileptics. | No epileptics or criminals. | |
| 82 died in infancy. | Only fifteen children died in infancy. | |
| 3 criminals. | ||
| 8 keepers of disreputable houses. | ||
| 46 only ones known to ben ormal. |
Certainly there is abundant food for thought in these two records.