The main trend of our findings and the outlook now, after five years’ study of offenders in connection with courts, is requested. It is plain that in a short paper only a few of the more prominent points can be touched. We must leave analyses and adequate descriptions for our larger publications. However, we can here discuss some of the outcomes and limitations of applied methods. In this summary fashion, taking stock may be wise just at this time, when the practice of psychology is beginning to be exploited similarly to the practice of medicine. Also, lack of knowledge in many quarters of this new work and perhaps, the recent statement of a well-known clinical psychologist to the effect that psychology (or at least he says pseudopsychology) can render no aid in the courts, call for review of the facts.
Concerning the part that psychology in its practical, applied, clinical aspects should play in the court work, we may consider the following. View it as you may, there is no escape from the basic fact that conduct, social behavior, is a product of the mental life of the individual. The most direct driving forces of misconduct therefore are very properly to be regarded as material for study which comes well within the province of the science of mental life. (It must have been this which led the great jurist and criminalist, Gross, to state that psychological valuations must ultimately become the basis of all criminal law.) An individual differential psychology is involved which requires knowledge of the bearings which many varieties of mental conditions have upon action.
At the beginning of our work, we were advised by the most eminent psychologists that the field was virgin. Everywhere we were told that the use of the standard apparatus of the laboratory, the ergograph, plethsygmograph, the chronoscope, all had no bearing on our problem, for the results from none of them had been found to be correlated with any traits or conditions which were of peculiar significance in offenders. Many hopes that had been expressed by those who ardently desired the rapid practical extension of psychology had not borne fruition. We were told that methods must be worked and normal sought out. In other words, it was deliberately stated by many, that neither classical nor experimental psychology had as yet anything to offer for dealing with this human problem. To introduce the usual and often complicated devices of the laboratory, which are for measuring and discriminating the simpler elements of mental life, would be, it was said, to delude ourselves and be in the position of misleading others. In accordance with our appreciation of this consideration we have all along proceeded by methods which seem to have in them the greatest proportion of common sense, and to be most likely to show correlation between offending careers and characteristics possibly at the root of criminalistic tendencies.
Moreover, as time has gone on we have become more and more convinced that those who study offenders should seek not only for peculiarities and disabilities, correlated with tendencies to offend, but also for potentialities, for special abilities which might be utilized for educational or occupational success. To grade the delinquent downwards is not sufficient. There may be the possibility of constructive work with him. As a matter of fact, some of the most encouraging results of our own efforts have come through the discovery that the offender was suited for something which he had never had the chance of doing, and that a corresponding adjustment of his affairs brought cessation of delinquencies. This has been even true with certain types of defectives.
Early in working with our cosmopolitan population, (and to a less extent the trouble would have shown itself among those of one language) we saw that any method of mental evaluation which was based largely upon language tests, whether or not given by such a questionaire method as that of Binet was quite unfair. Language, our universal method of communication, does not cover all the social graces, all the social values, nor does adeptness in the use of it mean unusual general ability. In fact, nothing has been any more striking in our findings than that some otherwise normal individuals have special defects for language, and that some general defectives have such powers in manipulating words that pass everywhere, even in courts, as normal and even bright. It was soon felt that over and beyond tests which involve the medium of communication, it would be more profitable to observe a performance with concrete material which possibly might be arranged to measure some of the socially most valuable mental qualities.
Such performance tests have had a great growth in these five years, as emanating from several centers, until at present they are quite widely used. For work with offenders, there is at present a wide range of tests to choose from. For practical clinical work even more tests are desirable, and it may be that some of those now used will be gradually discarded and replaced by others. It stands out very clearly that what one would like to know particularly about offenders is how they grade, not only in general intelligence, but also on tests which may possibly evaluate the powers of apperception, of mental representation, of self-control, of the ability to learn by experience, and so on. Defects along these lines seem likely to stand in much greater correlation to delinquent tendencies than any other we could name. Special educational and industrial disabilities may make for social failure and so may indirectly lead also to delinquency. It is usually not difficult to ascertain the nature of these defects. A few steps towards discovery of vocational aptitudes can also be made by the use of tests.
We still think that the early advice to keep our testing methods simple and direct was thoroughly sound. It is evident that we can use with scientific safety the Binet scale for grouping young children and defectives up to the level of 10 years. Beyond this, by using a wide range of other tests, we can discriminate other subnormal groups who are either defective in general or in special abilities.
In the present state of our knowledge concerning methods discretion is needed in the selection of tests. Those primarily adapted to one group may not be valid for another social or age group. We have just finished an interesting comparison of the results of a certain performance test in which college young women did worse on the average than younger persons. We have all too little proof that tests worked up for children are equally valid for adults. It is proposed that we render decisions upon, for instance, findings by the Binet tests, and yet it does not seem likely by the sort of results we ourselves have been getting that they could be as freely applied to adults as to children for the purposes of social diagnosis, of discriminating those who are bound to be unsuccessful. We must remember that no one as yet has given us the results of these tests as applied to hundreds of ditch diggers, or section hands, who in their lowly spheres form most useful members of society.
When it comes to the interpretation of tests we need to exercise much discretion. It is most dangerous to proceed to render diagnosis or prognosis without knowledge of the individual’s background in heredity, developmental history and social environment. Such items as previous illnesses, present physical condition, debilitating habits, and educational opportunities need to be noted. In our work the question of epileptic variations alone is frequently before us. We see very clearly that grave injustice to the situation may be done without taking such possible features of the case into account.
Very different phases of psychological work with offenders properly are taken up from the viewpoint of human conduct in general being the province of the student of human life. Quite the minority of offenders show mental peculiarities which can be learned by testing and then related to their delinquencies. Let us look at some comparisons of offenders as we have grouped them by most careful study. Our court work has been in the main to see the problem cases. Undoubtedly most of the suspected psychotic or defective cases have been selected and brought for study. We have made a series of 1000 recidivists, repeated offenders, the average age of whom is about 15 years. These have been graded by mental tests most carefully and we have found the following: