The history of the average "gangster" shows a taint of alcoholism. This is further aggravated by living under immoral surroundings, where petty crimes like stealing and lying are considered "smart." This is the starting point of the New York "gangster." He is handicapped, and under ancestral disabilities and the disadvantages of environment that is pernicious, he cannot get very far. A boy usually qualifies with a gang on his
own personality and tastes. He will often wander from one gang to another until he has found his particular atmosphere. The best will never find any one gang congenial enough to hold him, and he finally emerges a decent citizen. It is all a process of finding himself. The aim of the police should be to discount as much as possible any swaggering and false hero worship.
The time has come when this great nation should take national cognizance of this problem. There should be a national institution on some isolated island. Civilization is coming to recognize such a necessity. With a close eye on the tide of immigration and a careful segregation of these defective types, we should soon rid ourselves of what is now growing to be a serious menace to the home and the nation.
The Segregation and Treatment of the Feeble-Minded.—Dr. John Punton, of Kansas City, Mo., in an able and exhaustive article on "The Segregation and Treatment of the Feeble-Minded," writes as follows:
"Your attention is directed to a recent report issued by Wentworth E. Griffin, Chief of Police of Kansas City, Mo., in which he claims that recently within six months' time no less than 2,480 juveniles were arrested charged with crimes ranging from vagrancy to murder and that the majority of these boys and girls were not normal children, but degenerates who required medical rather than penal treatment. 'Boys and girls,' says he, 'should not receive correction in the city jails, the work house or reformatories. These should be the last resort. To correct a boy you must have an idea of his mental processes. It is natural that the parents understand something of the child and use that knowledge to make a good boy out of him. Certainly it cannot be done in the reformatories, for although the authorities there are competent, they are hardly medical psychologists. In my opinion, if any progress is to be made it is the parent and the doctor that must do the work, not the police and the courts.'
"That our Chief of Police deserves credit for not only publishing this report, but also for the advanced position he takes in recognizing the appropriate care and treatment
of the juvenile offender, is certain, for he understands the fact that the parents are often the chief culprits in the child's delinquency and that medical rather than penal treatment is more often indicated than is at present allowed or practiced.
"When we come to inquire into the cause of feeble-mindedness, alcoholic heredity, syphilitic heredity, and consanguineous marriages are found to be the chief etiological factors. Bourneville claims that 48 per cent. of the idiots and imbeciles are the offspring of alcoholic parents.... Acute and chronic diseases in the parents, fright, shock, injuries, parental neglect, faulty education, poverty, malnutrition, social dissipation and lack of proper control are all well-known factors in the production of feeble-mindedness.
"Segregation of the feeble-minded is advocated by medical authority the world over, and when this is done they can be made under appropriate medico-pedagogic treatment to become largely self-supporting.
"As an economical as well as a humane measure, the various States can well afford to make such provision, more especially for the large body of feeble-minded who are now without any medical care whatever. Moreover, where it is possible, laws prohibiting the marriage of such as well as all other defectives should be passed and enforced."