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
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.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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