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. 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.
C. SUMMARY OF TESTED DEFICIENCY AMONG DELINQUENTS
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