Deficiency and Delinquency: An Interpretation of Mental TestingMiner, James Burt
Science
Deficiency and Delinquency: An Interpretation of Mental Testing
Miner, James Burt
Children with mental disabilities; Juvenile delinquents; Mentally ill offenders; Psychological tests
Dr. Fernald has applied 11 objective tests to a representative group of
100 inmates at the Massachusetts Reformatory (_15_) but the norms for
the tests which he used were obtained, for the most part, by testing a
dozen boys so that the line which he draws for the limit of the
defectives is largely a matter of his expert opinion and the estimation
loses objective character. He estimates that 26% of his group whose ages
run from 15 to 35 inclusive were defective. Beanblossom[22] has
published an account of tests on 2000 inmates of the Indiana
Reformatory. Some of the Binet tests as well as other tests were used
but the published results do not admit of reinterpretation.
Comparing the reports from the Minnesota, Iowa, and New Jersey
reformatories with the tested deficiency found in institutions for women
delinquents on the basis of the same borderline with the scale, the
records indicate clearly that the percentage of feeble-mindedness is
greater in the reformatories for women. At the Bedford Reformatory for
women, for example, Dr. Weidensall's results show that the corresponding
borderline to that used in the New Jersey men's reformatory which
reported 46% deficient, would class 100% at Bedford as feeble-minded,
where only one case in 200 tested as high as XII. A conservative
estimate of tested deficiency in men's reformatories from the above data
would be from 15 to 20%.
In the state institutions for minor delinquents, usually called
industrial schools, we have several studies of representative groups
with sufficient data to make objective interpretations comparable with
our standard. In Ohio, Dr. Haines (_26_) reports on the examination of
671 delinquent boys 10 to 19 years of age at the Boys' Industrial School
near Lancaster. Interpreted as we have indicated for the Ohio
Institution for girls, we find 100, or 15%, in the group testing
presumably deficient and 179 in the doubtful group, a total of 42% clear
and questionable.
In the corresponding Michigan Industrial School at Lansing, Dr. Crane
(_37_) shows by his table of mental and life-ages that 52 out of the 801
unselected inmates, or 6% are presumably deficient and 171 below the
presumably passable, or 21%. This is only a slightly greater number than
our criterion would provide, if .8 of a year were not classed in the
next higher mental age by these examiners. The age of those examined ran
from 10 to 17.
T. L. Kelley in his “Mental Aspects of Delinquency”[23] gives the
results for an extensive series of measurements and tests on about three
hundred boys in the Texas State Juvenile Training School. On the basis
of an analysis of his tests he estimates that 20% of the boys there
should be in a school for the feeble-minded. Interpreting his original
data for the 1911 Binet tests on the same basis as our own, 8% fall
within the clearly deficient group and 9% in the doubtful. The latter on
account of their delinquencies might also be included as feeble-minded.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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