The accompanying Table X shows the distribution, omitting the dementia praecox cases. It classes .8 as in the next higher test age and shows the last birthday for life-age. In interpreting these figures it is highly important to remember that Thorn Hill is necessarily used at present to shelter deficient boys who are dependent or delinquent and cannot be otherwise provided for. This is undoubtedly a wise temporary relief until the state takes proper care of these unfortunates. Under the cottage system which prevails at Thorn Hill the segregation can be made with little interference with the main purpose of an institution for delinquents. It is apparent that any deductions made from the large frequency of feeble-mindedness among these delinquents without considering the particular local conditions under which they are found, would be wholly unjustified. A similar local condition probably explains the high percentage of tested deficiency among the following group of boys in the Newark, N. J., detention home.

A representative group of 100 in the detention home at Newark, “chosen entirely at random,” was examined by Mrs. Gifford, and reported by herself and Dr. Goddard (17). In this group of 100 there were 66 between the ages of 14 and 17 who were at least four years retarded mentally. Moreover, among these 66 “none tested over eleven and only a few at that age.” Only average mental ages are published, so that we cannot tell how many tested XI or X, but the statement quoted shows that few of these 66 would test XI, and would thus be above our doubtful class. We may, perhaps, suppose that about 66% of this group in the Newark detention home tested as low as the randomly selected group at Thorn Hill, Pittsburgh.

That the explanation of the excessive amount of deficiency found at Newark lies in the inadequate provision for recognized feeble-mindedness in that community is indicated by the Fourteenth Annual Report of the Newark City Home. It states that “the lack of a state institution for defective children made it necessary to commit to the City Home many children, who, on account of physical defects and psychic disturbances, have become juvenile delinquents.” A statistical table shows that of 181 boys, 151 were either illiterate or below the fifth grade in school in spite of the fact that the average age of the boys at the school is 13 years. This shows clearly that the differences between the test results at this institution and those in Minneapolis, Chicago, and elsewhere, is not the result of different methods of giving the tests. It seems to be mainly due to inadequate state provision for recognized feeble-minded children.

Among the more serious juvenile court offenders we have a group of 1000 recidivists referred to Dr. William Healy at the Psychopathic Institute connected with the Chicago Juvenile Court. The cases are not tabulated separately for the sexes as to mentality. They were all under 21 and averaged between 15 and 16 years of age. While he used the Binet tests quite generally, as well as his own and Miss Fernald's series (125), Dr. Healy has not summarized his data in reference to the test standards. Nevertheless, according to his experience after the results of the test examinations were known, he classified only 89 of these cases as moron and 8 imbecile, a total of only 9.7% feeble-minded. Another group above these amounting to 7.9% was classed as of “subnormal mentality—considerable more educability than the feeble-minded” (27, p. 139).

From the same psychopathic laboratory comes the estimates of Dr. Bronner (7) of a group of less serious offenders, some of whom were in court for the first time, a group at the Cook County Detention Home connected with the Juvenile Court in Chicago, where cases are held for trial or until other disposition can be made of them. I have already reported her results with the Binet tests for the girls in this group. Using the same standard which was there described, she found among 337 boys 7 to 16 years of age 7% “probably feeble-minded,” and 2.4% doubtful, a total of 9.4% “possibly feeble-minded.” As nearly as I can tell from the description of the borderline which she used with the tests, a boy was perhaps slightly more likely to be regarded as testing probably deficient than by our standard for the presumably deficient. Inasmuch as Miss Bronner worked with Dr. Healy, this may throw some light on the test standard which he had in mind in connection with his more serious offenders.

By means of Bluemel's study of different classes of juvenile delinquents who passed through Judge Lindsay's Juvenile Court in Denver, we are able to compare the intellectual ability of a group which was on probation, about half of whom were first offenders, with groups sent to the Boys' and Girls' State Industrial Schools (2). Although the report does not so state, I should judge that the cases were objectively selected. The published data is not adequate to state the results on the basis of our conservative borderlines; but we can note the cases which tested XI or below and were four or more years retarded with the 1911 Binet Scale (Goddard's modification). This only differs from my broadest interpretation by also including those that test XI. On this basis 6 of the 100 probationers were possibly deficient; 9 of the 50 boys sent to the State Industrial School, and 24 of the 50 girls sent to the State Industrial School or Florence Crittenden Home. These are all somewhat excessive estimates of the amounts of deficiency in this group as judged by the interpretation we have been using. A more telling comparison of the mentality of these groups may be made by weighting each retarded case by the tests according to the number of years he is retarded. The amount of retardation alone averages 1.3 years for the group of probationers, 1.8 for the boys at the state school, and 3.8 years of the institutional group of girl delinquents. Fifty first offenders among the probation group average 1.1 years retarded. The girls and the more serious juvenile delinquents in these younger groups show more retardation.

The Stenquist, Thorndike, and Trabue study of children 9 to 16 years of age, who were county charges as delinquents or dependents in a single county, provides results for a group of 104 delinquent boys. Translating their records as I have explained for the girls in the group, we find 11 of these presumably deficient and 18 doubtful, a total of 28%. So far as their delinquency is concerned these probably correspond to the local institution groups. While there is little difference in the average mentality of the groups of delinquent and dependent children in this county shown by tests there is apparently some difference in the frequency of serious deficiency. In their corresponding group of 63 dependent boys who were county charges, 2 are in the presumably deficient group and 10 in the doubtful, a total of 19%. Miss Merrill found only 0.8% in our presumably deficient group and 1.6% uncertain in a group of 250 dependent children at the Minnesota State home (149).

Dr. Pintner reports the examination of 100 cases in the Columbus, Ohio, Juvenile Court who were in the detention home waiting to be disposed of or held for trial.^[25] He does not say whether they were selected cases among those in the home, but we may presume that they were more serious offenders than the usual juvenile court cases not in the home. Their ages ranged from 7 to 20 years. He used the Binet 1911 series and allowed double credit for any test passed in the XV or adult series. By placing his borderline so that a person testing 3.1 years retarded if he scored under XII would be regarded as feeble-minded, Dr. Pintner found 46% feeble-minded in this group. Under the same standard about 20% of the Minneapolis group would be classed as feeble-minded, instead of 2 to 7% under our more conservative borderlines.

In a preliminary report of the doctorate examination of Dr. Olga L. Bridgman (132) I find that she reports testing 205 delinquents and 133 dependent children sent to the psychological clinic of the University of California. She found 36% of the delinquent and 26% of the dependent cases thus especially selected for clinical examination to be “definitely feeble-minded,” but the preliminary report does not enable one to judge the standard used for her borderline (3).

Ordahl's study^[26] of 61 cases who were wards of the San Jose Juvenile Court is not comparable with other groups since both sexes, both dependents and delinquents and ages from 3 to 44 were included.

Dr. Hickson (8) reports concerning some 2700 cases selected especially for examination from those passing through the municipal court in Chicago, in the divisions of the Boys Court, the Morals Court and the Domestic Relations Court. His tables state only average mental ages, and he classes 728 boys who average XI.11 as morons, so that I am unable to make any comparisons with his data.

Dr. Walter S. Cornell (92) published in 1912 the results of Binet tests on 100 cases at the Philadelphia House of Detention among whom 64% tested three or more years below normal and 41% four years or more below normal. We are unable to tell how many of these tested X or above and were thus of questionable deficiency. He also gives the results merely with the years of retardation for a group of 73 “mildly delinquent boys of Miss Wood's special school and the Children's Bureau (mostly truants).” Of this group 46% were three years or more and 25% four or more years retarded according to the tests. Again we are unable to judge how the cases were selected or what was the mental age distribution so as to discover those that fall under our borderlines, especially under the borderline of XI for the mature.

Psychological examinations have been employed in connection with the children at the Seattle Juvenile Court. Although the results are not presented in a form which can be compared with other localities, Dr. Merrill, the physician who directs the general clinic, is of the opinion that feeble-mindedness was the cause of the delinquency of only 6% of 421 consecutive cases (148). Previously in the same court, Dr. Smith, the psychologist, on the basis of tests, reported among 200 consecutive cases only 11 cases as feeble-minded, 5 as mentally defective, and 8 as “moral imbeciles,” a total of 13.5% (53).

Frau Dosai-Révész (13) gave a number of tests to 40 boys, 9 to 16 years of age, selected from the boys training school of the Children's Protective League in Hungary. The cases which she classified as morally feeble-minded were found to test between the normal and the feeble-minded groups.

As yet only the preliminary announcement has appeared of a study of a thousand delinquent boys and girls with the Point Scale which has been made by Bird T. Baldwin. It is to be published as a Swarthmore College Monograph (Psychol. Bull., 1917, 14, p. 78).

The reader should also consult the series of articles by L. W. Crafts and E. A. Doll appearing in the Journal of Delinquency beginning with May, 1917, on “The Proportion of Mental Defectives among Juvenile Delinquents.” It is especially valuable as a critique of the conditions desirable for exact comparison of the results of different investigations.

A Bibliography of Feeble-Mindedness in Relation to Juvenile Delinquency, compiled by L. W. Crafts, may be found in the Journal of Delinquency, Vol. I, No. 4. In Chap. II of his Problems of Subnormality, Dr. Wallin gives an admirable review of numerous studies of tested groups.

In bringing together these studies in which we can make somewhat comparable estimates of tested deficiency covering over 9000 delinquents, it seems possible to analyze further the question of the deficient delinquent. Comparison of the amounts of deficiency on an objective basis is scientifically a big step in advance from a reliance upon the subjective opinion of experts who cannot possibly have the same standard of deficiency in their minds. The results of the comparable investigations, on the basis of the above reinterpretation of the borderlines, are brought together in Table XI. The frequency of tested deficiency which is found among about the lowest 0.5 and 1.5% respectively of the population generally is there shown for these different groups of delinquents. This review of the studies thus assembled enables us to correct a number of impressions that have become prevalent by the early studies, as well as to formulate the general data in regard to the deficient delinquent in a manner that places the practical control of this problem on a safer foundation. We shall summarize the data under four heads.

Parentheses indicate percentages or selection on a somewhat different basis.

1. Intellectual deficiency as a social problem is undoubtedly at present most serious among women and girls who are sex offenders. It is this fact which accounts for the excessive amount of deficiency found in the industrial schools for girls, and the reformatories for women. It is not necessary to repeat the discussion of the reasons for this which were considered at the close of the studies of women delinquents. The most closely corresponding class of male delinquents is probably the “vags,” as Aschaffenburg suggests (68, p. 162). The vagrants form a much smaller portion of the inmates of the institutions for male delinquents than do the prostitutes in the institutions for women and girls. The little evidence we have indicates, moreover, that as a class the ne'er-do-wells average higher in ability than the prostitutes. They are, probably, a more mixed group. As reported by Terman (57), Mr. Kollin found among 150 “hoboes” at least 20 per cent. belonged to the “moron grade of mental deficiency.” * * * “The above findings have been fully paralleled by Mr. Glen Johnson and Professor Eleanor Rowland, of Reed College, who tested 108 unemployed charity cases in Portland, Oregon” (57, p. 18). Since these investigators used the Stanford Scale, the borderline was probably set at the position where it would exclude about 1% of the ordinary population, a little more conservative than our doubtful group. We should know more about deficiency among the typical “Weary Willies,” since it is likely that courts are accustomed to assume that vagrancy is a habit which can be corrected by a term in the workhouse. There is little doubt that mental deficients fill up the recruiting stations for the prostitutes and “vags.” It is with these classes that the most intensive social work should be done in the campaign for early isolation of the unfit.

2. Institutions which care for the same type of delinquents show pronounced variation in the amount of tested deficiency. Compare the Indiana Boys' School with the Michigan Industrial School for Boys. Thirty per cent. tested presumably deficient in the former as against 6% in the latter; or 48% in the former and 21% in the latter tested below our borderline for the presumably passable intellects. This difference can hardly be explained by errors in testing. It marks a significant difference between the care of the mentally deficient in the two states. The difference in the success of states in isolating their feeble-minded is best shown by comparing the Newark and Pittsburgh institutions for boys from the juvenile courts on the one hand, and the local groups of boy delinquents from Hennepin County, Minn., and Cook County, Ill., on the other. In one case over 60% and in the other less than 10% were below the same borderline. In other words, the courts in Newark and Pittsburgh were deliberately sending mental deficients to their local institutions for delinquents because there was no better place available, not because they mistook deficiency for delinquency. The better diagnosis of deficiency by test criteria is, however, the first step in demonstrating this situation so that public sentiment for an adequate state care for the feeble-minded may be in accord with a conservative statement of the present conditions. Moreover, we have made real progress when we have demonstrated objectively that the difference in the character of the inmates of corresponding institutions is not a mere matter of opinion.

3. Unfortunately for social reform, a wholly incorrect impression seems to have spread abroad that half of the delinquents in juvenile courts are feeble-minded. Exaggeration of the condition retards rather than assists a sane public policy regarding the indefinite isolation of those demonstrably deficient by psychological tests. The mistaken impression apparently started with the study of Goddard and Gifford as to the condition found among boys at the Newark Detention Home. Two-thirds of these boys tested approximately below our borderline for clearly passable intellects. I should not be inclined seriously to question calling these two-thirds in the Newark Home feeble-minded, since I am willing to class those in our doubtful group as feeble-minded provided that they are persistent delinquents. The deductions which were drawn from this startling discovery seem, however, to have slipped into the literature of the subject without anybody noting that they were unjustified by the facts. In the first place the condition at Newark Detention Home may reflect a peculiar local situation analogous to that at Pittsburgh in which deficient boys had to be cared for in the detention home because no other institution was available for these feeble-minded. Under these recognized local conditions, it would seem that the general situation might be better represented by the conditions of deficiency found since then in Cook and Hennepin counties than by the conditions at Newark. We at least know that Newark and Pittsburgh represent special and not ordinary conditions among those in local detention homes, unless the situation is very different in the East from that in the West.

Besides regarding the condition in the Newark Detention Home as representative of the general condition in detention homes elsewhere, it was argued that the condition in the detention home represented the condition among the ordinary cases of delinquents before the juvenile courts. The groups in detention homes are undoubtedly extreme both as to the seriousness of their delinquency and as to their deficiency. Since Goddard published his paper following the Newark study considerable additional evidence has been made available. But even without this contradictory data, it was a big jump to assume that the condition in the local detention home represented the frequency of deficiency among the ordinary cases which come before the juvenile courts.

Either Dr. Goddard overlooked this distinction between serious offenders who are often repeaters and the ordinary offenders, or he took the questionable position that the difference was unimportant. On the basis of the tests of cases in the detention home in Newark, which we have quoted, he says that “by actual test 66% of the children in the Juvenile Courts of Newark are feeble-minded.” Again after quoting the results of examinations of delinquents at several institutions, he says: “Suppose we take the very lowest figure that any of these studies suggests, namely 25%, and see for a moment where it leads us. Twenty-five per cent. of the children who come before the Juvenile Court[A] are feeble-minded. The figures cannot be less than that” (19).

This paper was subsequently referred to by Dr. Fernald, physician at the Massachusetts Reformatory, as follows: “It has been found by the most eminent research workers in this field that probably not less than 25% of the criminals who come before our courts are feeble-minded and that a much larger percentage of the children brought before the Juvenile Court are defective” (103).^[29]

The incorrectness of the assumption that detention home cases show no more deficiency than ordinary juvenile court cases could not at the time be demonstrated. Since then, however, there have been several objective studies. In Minneapolis we found that relatively twice as large a proportion of the serious offenders sent to the county detention home were either three or four years retarded in school as we found among the ordinary juvenile offenders taken consecutively. The data will be presented later under our discussion of the school test. We also found that if we compared the results of Binet examinations at the Minnesota reformatory (22) with those at the county detention home, tested deficiency is about five times as common among the older and more established offenders at the reformatory. At Chicago serious deficiency was less frequent among those in the detention home than among more serious recidivists. Bluemel, as we have also noted, found that the frequency of tested retardation was decidedly greater among boys in Denver sent to the State Industrial School than among those only put on probation in that city. The investigation of Stenquist, Thorndike and Trabue shows that serious deficiency is less among dependent boys than among delinquents in the same county. Cornell found less truant boys deficient than delinquent boys, in the Philadelphia House of Detention. In Chicago, Denver and Minneapolis, moreover, less than 10% of the more serious cases in the detention homes were found deficient. This evidence all tends to contradict the assumption that a large proportion of the ordinary children brought before the juvenile court is feeble-minded.

Ernest K. Coulter, as Clerk of the Children's Court of New York County, has raised his voice in protest against charging the Juvenile Courts with dealing mainly with feeble-minded children. He says:

“The writer, who has seen at close range 80,000 children pass through the largest Children's Court in the world, has little patience with the sentimentalist who would pounce on every other juvenile delinquent as a mental defective” (94, p. 68).

Unless we are to convert valuable propaganda for isolating the feeble-minded from good kindling wood into shavings, we must remove this cloud which has been cast upon the mentality of the ordinary children who are brought before juvenile courts of the country. Travis, (202) years ago, may have been nearer right when he said that 95% of the children who come before the Juvenile Court are normal. Surely this agrees better with the conditions found in Chicago, Denver, and Minneapolis. Possibly these western cities, however, show unusually good conditions. The evidence as to the peculiar local situations in Newark and Pittsburgh makes one confident that their detention home conditions do not at all represent the frequency of mental deficiency among ordinary juvenile offenders in these cities. I see nothing in the present evidence from mental tests to indicate that the frequency of mental deficients who might justly be sent to institutions from among the ordinary children who come before the juvenile courts of the country, would be over 10 per cent.

4. What shall we say as to the general frequency of deficiency among delinquents of all classes? How about the impression that a large proportion of them are not responsible because of their deficiency and that the condition is worse among juveniles? Note some of the published statements: “Probably 80% of the children in the Juvenile Courts in Manhattan and Bronx are feeble-minded.” “Preliminary surveys have shown that from 60% to 70% of these adolescents [sent to the industrial schools in one state] are retarded in their mental development and are to be classed as morons.” “Forty to 50% of our juvenile delinquents are without a doubt feeble-minded.” “The best estimate and the result of the most careful studies indicate that somewhere in the neighborhood of 50% of all criminals are feeble-minded.” “Nearly half of those punished for their wickedness are in reality paying the penalty for their stupidity.” “More than a quarter of the children in juvenile courts are defective.” “One-third of all delinquents are as they are because they are feeble-minded.” “It is extremely significant in the study of juvenile delinquency that practically one-third of our delinquent children are actually feeble-minded.”

Fortunately, some of these writers are already beginning to qualify and modify their views, and some of these statements misstate the idea of the investigators, but it is difficult to correct the impression that has been gathered from those who speak with authority. In the face of the fact that mental deficiency is undoubtedly the most important single factor to be considered today in the institutional care of delinquents, one hesitates to correct even the most exaggerated impressions as to its importance. On the other hand, it seems time to modify opinions which raise false hopes as to solving the problem of delinquency by caring for the feeble-minded. Above all it is important to lay a surer foundation on which a platform for the social care of these unfortunates may be securely built.

In the first place, it is necessary to recognize that after all the feeble-minded are properly cared for by society the problem of the ordinary delinquent may still remain with us in much of its present proportions. Surely the isolation of the deficient children will hardly scratch the surface of the problem of first offenders as it comes before the juvenile courts of the country. To this it should be replied that the first offenders are not, after all, the troublesome cases before our courts. If we study the different groups of delinquents which have been tested, we notice that they represent highly selected groups among the ordinary offenders whether these be adults or minor delinquents. The only parallelism which can be traced at all is between prostitutes and vagrants and some of the institutional groups. We should stop assuming that the institutional delinquents represent the ordinary offenders. The present evidence points to the conclusion that it is the repeaters, not the first offenders either in the juvenile or criminal courts, who are most likely to be deficient. Nevertheless, 68% of the boys brought before the Chicago Juvenile Court during its first ten years were first offenders (142), while 89% of 4143 boys in the Juvenile Court in Minneapolis were first offenders (105). We know almost nothing about the frequency of deficiency among the first offenders brought before our courts and yet the bulk of delinquents are undoubtedly first offenders.

On the other hand, the repeaters do account for a considerable portion of the cases before the courts, especially the municipal courts, because each offender appears time and time again. In the Virginia city cited, for example, repeaters furnished 60% of the jail commitments for three years. This is probably also an indication of the workhouse situation, which is best represented by such a study as that of Kohs. The proportions of offenses accounted for by deficiency would, therefore, be much larger than the proportion of offenders who are deficient. While the offenses of repeaters might not commonly be serious crimes, they afford a serious problem because of their bulk and because temporary restraint is of little use when the offender is mentally weak. As Aschaffenburg says: “We must not forget that it is not the murderers, not the swindlers, on a large scale, not the assassins of people in high places, and not the sexual murderers, that determine the criminal physiognomy of our day, but the thieves and pickpockets, the swindlers and abusers of children, the tramps and the prostitutes” (68, p. 181).

The best that we can do is to study Table XI, which gives us a classified list of different types of delinquents in institutions. If we should pick out in it such institutions as represent to us the typical conditions in the country we could get an idea of what we might expect from groups of offenders of each type. For example, we might say that the Massachusetts State prison is typical of such institutions, and it contained possibly 16% who were deficient. Picking the Ohio Boys Industrial School as typical of its class, it had between 15% and 42% deficient, depending on how conservative you wish to be in your diagnosis. So one might go through the list stating the expectation for each type of institutional delinquent. If these were then weighted according to the number of delinquents of each class in the country sent to them, we would have some idea of the frequency of deficiency among those who reach the institutions. Merely to average the columns in Table XI would give only a false impression. The seriousness of the situation is amply demonstrated among repeaters and the inmates of certain institutions. Each superintendent should be put upon inquiry as to his own charges.

Nothing which I have said in caution as to the importance of deficiency in solving the problem of delinquency can be taken for a moment to signify that the effort for the isolation of the deficient is misspent. Elimination of a generation of deficients will not solve the problem of delinquency, but in no other way is there open such a clear and definite method of reducing that problem. The better care and prevented procreation of even a tenth of the delinquents who would propagate deficiency, would mean the most scientific advance in attacking the problem of delinquency. A safe public policy can be formulated which would at first provide for appropriate permanent care of at least that number of delinquents in institutions who by test are presumably deficient. This perfectly obvious first step promises to tax our facilities for years.