MENTAL DEFECTS AND DELINQUENCY
Wm. Healy, M. D.
Director, Juvenile Psychopathic Institute, Chicago
Reasons for the abundant ineffectiveness in the treatment of the criminal are to be found in the historical development of the situation. His case is handled by court procedure evolved, almost wholly, from legal precedent and consisting of rules which appertain, as it were, to a definite contest. As the result of this evolution it has come about that even modern criminal procedure in several respects fails to apply well established scientific knowledge and so lags far behind the dictates of common sense.
It may be that the experiential wisdom of the ages, crystallized into modern law, serves well enough as the setting for criminal trials in which there is much presumption of innocence, as well as for civil cases, although in this hour of testing mental capacities even some points here seem doubtful. But what shall we say about the trial of recidivists, those repeaters who make up the costly and dangerous class, the confirmed criminals? If there is anything clear about the matter to the man in the street it is that certain facts either purposely avoided in court procedure, such as inadmissible evidence, or not brought out on account of incomplete examination into the case are frequently mostimportant for decision from the standpoint of the welfare of society and indeed often of the defendant’s own well-being. The fact that the defendant has been convicted of crime and perhaps of this particular type of crime before, that he has mental peculiarities or physical infirmities that make him specially liable to commit crime, that he comes from a family in which mental deficiency is inherited or the criminalistic tendency is rampant—these points among others are not only of scientific import, but seem clearly germane and most valuable for deciding what ought to be done with him.
The facts of recidivism are startling enough to command attention—whether one’s interest in the matter be economic, legal, humanitarian or anthropological. The terrific cost of crime, the failure of court methods to check criminalism, either in the individual or as a whole, the impotency of ordinary penological efforts and the considerable inadequacy of even the best reformatory type of institution are causes for amazement. By even a superficial glance at the facts we are thrown at once into an inquiry, what manner of a person is this recidivist, this individual who in spite of admonitory teachings and punishments goes on pursuing a career which leads him into just the situation which he wishes to avoid. Justice Rhodes of England writes an article in a medical journal, putting up the matter squarely to the medical profession, asking them what it means when out of 182,000 convictions in a year, 10,000 have been convicted more than twenty times before. “On the face of it,” he asks, “doesn’t this seem more like a problem for those who have to do with abnormal personalities than merely for the law?”
Even if a statistical survey of crime and recidivism did not point directly in explanation to the peculiarities of the unit offender, it would in general seem as if the anthropological outlook, applied to the criminal himself, would be easily the best point of vantage in studying the crime situation. Here is a given individual, performing acts inimical to his fellows and retributively painful to himself. What leads him socially to react thus and so? Taking this view, common sense would seem to demand study of the causative factors in every case, and this means, first and foremost, investigation of those mental characteristics which underlie conduct.
Beginning such a study of the causative factors of crime and taking account of deviation from the normal among the criminalistic, we immediately see that mental defect looms very large. Just how extensive this factor is we are unable to say, because thoroughgoing examinations of delinquents have not yet been registered in sufficient numbers. Sutherland, who has had a large experience and has well considered the matter, states in his work on Recidivism (p. 50) that it is not wide of the mark to say that one-third of criminal recidivists are pathological specimens, “suffering from physical and mental degeneracy characterized by mental warp, instability and feeblemindedness,” and that of petty offender recidivists it is equally safe to hold that two-thirds are pathological in the same sense. The British Royal Commission for the study of the feebleminded looked at 2,300 prisoners in cursory fashion and without mental tests decided that they could determine about ten per cent. to be feebleminded. Incomplete work from many sources testifies to considerable proportions of feebleminded among criminals. We ourselves, in our Chicago Institute, are for several reasons doing fairly intensive work, and I would at once disclaim that our figures have much statistical value. Yet of 620 cases of youthful repeaters carefully studied by us and classified in a scale of mental ability and peculiarity, twenty-six per cent. grade distinctly below the class which we call poor in native ability.
We found:
Scattered for the most part through these classes we found 7½ per cent. of the total 620 to be definitely epileptic.
What a curious maladjustment it seems that while all this acknowledged social failure is in progress, and while there is this obvious incompetency of legal methods in ascertaining adequate facts for betterment of the situation, there should be so very little study of where the trouble lies. In courts for adult offenders there is almost no opportunity for unbiassed investigation of the individual criminal. In the juvenile court, with its advantages of intimate relationships established there, how can the judge from his short examination determine even this question of the mental status of the delinquent? Opinion on this subject in courts is formed by the questionnaire method, which from a scientific standpoint, for various reasons, is notoriously unsafe. Not only in court room procedure is there inadequate investigation of the individual, but all through the situation in regard to the handling of delinquents the same is true. Nowadays when the value of efficiency bureaus is everywhere recognized, it seems strange that this most business-like bit of work should not have been taken up. The outlay is millions and hundreds of millions for repression, but practically nothing for the study of how efficiently to repress.
In the past the legal disposition of offenders with mental peculiarity has very largely hinged on the question of criminal responsibility. Now this question, especially in the case of high-grade mental defectives, involves some pretty fundamental philosophical points and probably this most dangerous class will never have its responsibility completely standardized and determined. We have in sight no likelihood of finding a test or criterion of the power of ethical discernment and control. The best thinkers have finally relegated the whole problem to the common sense of juries. But a much more profitable way of looking at the matter is whether or not the individual is going to do it again, whether he is going to become a recidivist, a menace to society, and whether he is to breed progeny of the same ilk. The self-protection of society is herein involved. Why should we not drop the technical and hardly decidable question of criminal responsibility and the idea of mere punishment, and take up the much more vital problem of how society is to protect itself?
Looked at as a matter wherein the welfare of society is the chief concern, one most difficult point in the problem of mental defect grows more readily soluble. I speak of those cases in which evidence of feeblemindedness, although distinct, especially if studied by means of tests, is minor in degree as compared with the ethical defect present. These form a class of offenders most difficult to deal with because so frequently, on account of good development of language ability, they pass in the world in general, and in courts in particular, as practically normal individuals. This type has been designated by various terms. Anton has recently published a symposium monograph on the subject showing that the consensus of opinion is that there certainly exists a distinct group in which moral defect is out of proportion to the amount of mental subnormality. The recent report of the Massachusetts commission on the increase of criminals emphasizes this very point. To those who doubt the existence of mental defect in such cases I commend the use of psychological tests. Better study of the individual will, in any case, give some indication of that most important point for the welfare of society, namely, whether or not the crime will be repeated.
Turning in the interests of society to the study of the individual offender, especially the recidivist, we shall at once be led by practical considerations into an attempt to decipher the causative factors of his career. The great value of such intelligent study can be shown in many types of cases, but nowhere is it more evident than when the offenders are mentally defective. The recent work of Miss Moore for the Public Education Association of New York shows the after-records of some children formerlyin the subnormal rooms in the New York public schools and also of some of the feebleminded men who were paroled from the Elmira Reformatory to New York. The financial and moral cost to the community has been very great from such sources. We ourselves have many such records, showing the terrible burden a criminalistic defective is to the community. Dozens of times, indeed up to a hundred times in the police stations, is the record of even some of the younger members of this group, as we have observed them.
Intelligent study of the problem of recidivism means catching the repeater as early as possible and making a diagnosis and prognosis for disposal of his case at once or in the future. The advantages of studying the recidivist when young are many, both from a scientific and a reformatory point of view. It is often also of immense importance to study the adult repeated offender. The disposal of him offers more difficulties frequently than the adjustment of the juvenile case. There is one matter in connection with adult offenders upon which I wish to lay special emphasis. It is in regard to the parole of criminals. It seems clear to me that if the whole matter of adult probation is to be placed upon the most sensible basis, the scientific facts which have bearing upon the situation must be brought into use. I hold that no criminal should be released upon parole until enough of a study has been made of his individuality and the causative factors of his delinquency so that there may be some sort of a guarantee that his offenses will not be continued. As it stands, almost nothing of this sort is being done. It should be the first and main inquiry of any board of parole to know whether or not the individual under consideration is likely to be a recidivist. Several points of view would be connected in such an inquiry, but the point we are concerned with today is one of the greatest value for the decision. The first question to be asked, if the matter is to be sensibly decided, is about the mental status of the individual. This inquiry with its various ramifications will often be found of great significance in answering the vital question: “Will crime be committed again by this individual?”
Intelligent study of an actual or a potential recidivist means a fairly complete investigation and is worth days of work if this be necessary. It needs a combination of the sociological, medical and psychological standpoints. We ourselves find particularly rich fields for explanation of the case in getting the history of families and of developmental conditions and in psychological examinations. The latter has been much hampered in the past by lack of practical tests, but of late these have been developed. At the present time any intelligent observer can judge something of the mental capacity of an individual by seeing his performance, under proper conditions, on a group of tests which correspond to the normal ability of the child. The well-known Binet tests, imperfect though they probably are in some respects, form an epoch-making advance in the study of feeblemindedness. We ourselves have been at much pains in the last two years in developing, with the help of a number of psychologists, a group of tests directed to the estimation of native mental ability in older and higher types of individuals. We may hope for much greater standardization of tests in the future, but, even as it now stands, there can be no doubt that just such a practical mental classification as the work with delinquents demands can be readily carried out by qualified persons.
If, avoidinga prioristandpoints, we enter upon a study of the recidivist, we find such a considerable number of causative factors determinable that this at once precludes the idea of crime being anything like a disease entity. Indeed, one soon comes to feel that many of the set notions about crime are academic and absurd in the light of facts ascertainable by a free-minded, practical and thoroughgoing investigation of the individual cases. Crime may be the action of a Charlotte Corday or of a Jesse Pomeroy and in form, impulse and factors of underlying causation may be found to be so varied in its manifestations that many pseudo-philosophical speculations and legal pronunciamentoson the subject are readily seen to be nothing but slipshod generalizations. Quinton, a man of great experience, in his recent work says, with apparently purposeful exaggeration, that there are just as many classes as there are criminals. Mental defect is to be considered simply as one of the causes of crime, but it is a cause so obvious, so readily determinable in most cases and so certainly irremediable and provocative of recidivism and moral contagion that one of the first steps of reform in dealing with criminals ought to be directed toward this. The mental defective is suitable neither for probation, reformatory education nor punitive measures. Custodial care alone is of service and in the case of the criminalistically inclined defective the courts should directly commit and the state protect itself by permanent guardianship.
The time is ripe for better methods of handling this class of cases. The study of recidivism shows it as a blot upon our civilization, and demonstrates that many recidivists are mental defectives. The study, on the other hand, of the individual defective criminal demonstrates him to be a source of great financial loss and much moral contagion. Studies in heredity prove that he frequently begets his kind. Developments along medical and psychological lines have given us practical methods for diagnosis of mental defectives—even the border-line cases being easily determinable as such—and give us assurance of the social future of this class of cases. The work of our own institute proves not only the applicability of common-sense study of causative factors in general to court work in this country, but directly demonstrates the overwhelming value of early differentiation of a type of offender, who by the very nature of his mental make-up is bound under ordinary social conditions to become a recidivist.
In order to get a more business-like administration of criminal affairs so that there may be practical application of at least some points which are scientifically demonstrable as imperative for the well-being of society, certain things are necessary. Concerning our immediate point, the needs are: first, better education of everybody implicated in the criminal situation as to the part that mental defect plays in delinquency. Then in connection with criminal courts, and especially in connection with juvenile courts, where the development of crime can be checked, there should be thoroughgoing study of the recidivist. The court should be acquainted with the practical value of such study and should act on it. No offender should be allowed on parole unless he is known to have the mental make-up which, on the whole, will in his environment tend to prevent his freedom from being inimical to society. Then, not a difficult matter to insure, there must be better classified institutional treatment. Finally, the court should have the power to adjudicate cases of mental defect in the best interests of society.