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
This work conclusively demonstrates that crime runs in families. The
probable value of the correlation between conviction for crime on the
part of the father and son was found to be .60, while the correlation
between mother and son was only slightly less. The tendency to resemble
brothers in criminality was shown by the probable fraternal correlations
of .45. Whether this family resemblance is mainly through nature or
nurture is the problem.
In analyzing the influence of the home he uses partial correlation and
finds that the correlation between age at first conviction and the
number of convictions for a constant period of time after the first
conviction is -.243. “From the value and sign of this coefficient, we
see that the earlier in life a child commits a criminal offence, and is
consequently removed from his home, the worse criminal does he become;
and, accordingly, we conclude that criminal proclivities are more bred
in the home than inoculated there” (_119_, p. 368). This argues against
the predominant influence of the home training or example as explaining
_family resemblance_ in criminality. Nevertheless, it would seem that
the result might also be interpreted as meaning that the contact with
other delinquents and official discipline outside the home at a more
impressionable age notably increases the tendency to recidivism.
Besides the argument as to the earlier removal from home, we have a test
of the question whether those kinds of crime that are most influenced by
contagion show closer correlation within the family. His statement of
the results is as follows:
“Our table 177, above, starting with crimes of fraud, passes to
stealing and burglary—professional crimes, where the influence of
criminal contagion should be the most intense; and then
progressively to violence, arson and sexual offenses, in which last
it is difficult to understand how the influence of example could
have any effect at all. We can understand the influence of parental
training in the original moulding of a professional burglar or
thief, and, to a certain extent, it is conceivable that the constant
spectacle of the lack of control in parents might lead their
offspring to emulate them in acts of unlawful violence. But, that
parental example could play any part of importance in the
perpetration by their offspring of crimes such as arson and wilful
damage to property, and, particularly, of sexual offenses, is not
reasonably to be supposed. As seen in the above table, 177, the
parental correlation for sexual crimes, and crimes for wilful damage
to property is from .45 to .5; for stealing, it is from .48 to .58.
We would assume then, from this evidence, that the tendency of the
inherited factor in criminality is from .45 to .5, and the intensity
of criminal contagion is anything between .05 and .1” (_20_, p.
367).
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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