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
(2) _Variation among Different Communities._ Under any conception of
deficiency it is clear that there are relatively more deficients in some
communities than others. The percentage should, of course, not be
determined for a small community such as a city or county, but for a
state or a nation in order to avoid the difficulty of the difference
between communities. It would not interfere with the plan for isolating
the lowest X percentage of a state even if that meant isolating 10% in
one small community and none in another. Indeed, it might be expected to
do just that, when one considers the accumulation of deficiency in
certain settlements such as Key has shown (_131_, p. 63). The data on
which the borderline with a measuring scale would be established should,
of course, not be obtained from communities known to be unusual in
respect to the frequency of deficiency.
Since social failure is our final criterion for judging deficiency, we
must further consider that it is easier for a person to survive in one
environment than in another: in the country, for example, than in the
city. This sort of problem has led to considerable confusion. Goddard
remarks: “In consequence of this it happens that a man may be
intelligent in one environment and unintelligent in another. It is this
point which Binet has illustrated by saying 'A French peasant may be
normal in a rural community but feeble-minded in Paris.'” (_117_, p.
573.) Goddard then goes on to suppose that a delinquent with the
intelligence of a sixteen year old may be “defective” because he happens
“to have got into an environment that requires a twenty-year-old
intelligence.” The suggestion that a criminal might be excused on the
ground of deficiency because he happened to fall among bad companions is
a _reductio ad absurdum_. Clearly environment must be defined as
ordinary environment, available environment or by some similar concept,
or else the definition of deficiency loses all significance. In another
place Goddard more properly suggests that it would be well to “draw one
line at that point below which a person of that intelligence is not
desirable or useful _in any environment_” (_117_, p. 3).
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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