R. B. McCord, Member Ex. Committee.
SOME PRISON PROBLEMS
[At the recent meeting of the American Prison Association, Frank L. Randall, Superintendent of the Minnesota State reformatory at St. Cloud, read as chairman the report of the committee on reformatory work and parole, from which we print the following extracts.]
To the chief executive officers of penal and correctional institutions in the United States and Canada was submitted the following question: “To what extent do you recognize mental inadequacy and constitutional inferiority among the persons in your charge?”
The estimates are various. Among prisons for adults they range from 3 persons out of 240 in Wyoming, to 10 per cent. in Nebraska and Philadelphia, 20 per cent. in Rhode Island, 25 per cent. in Vermont, 30 per cent. in Indiana, 30 per cent. to 40 per cent. in Wisconsin, fully 50 per cent. in Kansas, 60 per cent. in West Virginia, 50 per cent. to 75 per cent. in Minnesota, and a still higher percentage of prisoners lacking in energy, mentally or physically, in one Michigan prison. Major McClaughry, and Warden Wood of Virginia, wrote that they could not answer the question.
From state reformatories came estimates covering a range from 25 per cent. to 40 per cent. only in Iowa, Washington, Kansas, and New York (Elmira). The writer, regretting his inability to report more exactly, because the work in his institution has not been completed, feels safe in concurring in the general approximations cited by reformatory superintendents.
From the New York reformatory for women at Bedford Hills we have the following: “Realizing that a large percentage are subnormal, July 1, 1911, we employed a trained psychologist who will make it a year’s study.” From juvenile institutions the returns are neither more hopeful, nor more satisfying, and many institutions of that class seem to have no special facilities for caring for weaklings, and depend upon a relaxation of the discipline in their behalf. A study of 200 in the boys industrial school in Kansas disclosed that 174 were mentally dull, markedly defective, or two or more years behind their proper place in school. In the industrial school of New Hampshire about 75 per cent. are reported to be four to five years below their normal grade in school.
Other letters say “probably 25 per cent., at least;” “one-third;” “50 per cent.;” “to a very large extent;” and so forth. The Idaho industrial training school reports: “A very small per cent.; I think not above five per cent.;” and the Georgia state reformatory reports that “the discipline has to be based on the fact that 75 per cent. of inmates are mental defectives and 99 per cent. are moral defectives.” The girls industrial home of Ohio says: “Fully nine-tenths are subnormal mentally, and a large per cent. physically weak or crippled.” From the Iowa industrial school for girls comes the following: “There is a certain inferiority, either mental or constitutional inadequacy, in each and every one. In the majority of cases it is a weakness; that is, they are easily influenced, therefore easily led astray.”
It seems fair and right to allow for a difference among the writers as to the full import of the question to which they have responded, but that may not entirely account for the considerable differences in estimates. Possibly varying court proceedings, and the use of the power of probation by some of the courts or other exemptions from detention, may, in some places, have culled out most of the normal children.