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
The 215 inmates of the Whittier State School in California were examined
by J. Harold Williams with the Stanford revision of the Binet scale
(_61_). The boys were 10 to 22 years of age, median 16 years. He states
that 32% were feeble-minded in the sense of having Intelligence
Quotients less than .75. This is a standard which would include about 2%
of those tested with the scale, so that we may consider the bulk of them
as within our presumably deficient and uncertain groups combined. He
also states that approximately 14% tested below X with the Stanford
Revised Scale. In another paper he shows that the amount of
feeble-mindedness was much different among the different races
represented in the institution. With 150 cases according to his standard
there were 6% feeble-minded among the whites, 48% among the colored, and
60% among the Mexican and Indian races. In this group 64% were native
whites, 21% of Indian or Mexican descent and 15% colored. “While the
negro population of California constitute but 0.9% of the total, yet the
results of this study indicate that more than 15% of the juvenile
delinquents committed to the state institution are of that race.” It is,
of course, of fundamental importance in regard to all estimates of
feeble-mindedness among delinquents to consider the racial conditions at
the particular institution.
A New Hampshire Commission tested the children in its State Industrial
School. Its table shows that among the 113 boys tested at least 37% were
presumably or doubtfully deficient. To these should be added some 14
years of age and over who tested X, in order to have the total number
below our borderline for the presumably passable cases. The published
table does not separate these from the 13-year-olds (_40_). Hauck and
Sisson report in School and Society for September, 1911, tests made at
the Idaho Industrial School, which receives both boys and girls from 9
to 21 years of age, including some children who would be classed as
dependents but can not be cared for elsewhere in the state. Supposing
that our standard applied to the 1911 scale which was used, among 201
tested there were 5 presumably deficient and 13 doubtful.
A partially selected group of 341 inmates at the St. Charles, Ill.,
State School for Boys chosen in such a way that it naturally would
somewhat increase the frequency of deficiency, was tested by Dr. Ordahl
with Kuhlman's form of the 1911 scale supplemented by the Stanford Scale
above XII. The results showed 11% in the presumably deficient group and
20% in the doubtful group (_41_).
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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