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
As an interpretation of the results which have been obtained with mental
tests, this book lies between the topics of deficiency and delinquency.
It is an attempt to discover the significance of objective measurements
of ability in connection with both of these fields. The pressing
practical problem was to find out what positions on a scale for testing
mental development were symptomatic of social deficiency. After working
out a percentage method for conservatively indicating these borderlines
for tested deficiency, it was then possible to reinterpret the test
records of over 9000 delinquents who have been examined with some form
of the well-known Binet Scale. The size of the problem of the deficient
delinquent has thus been determined on a significant scientific plan.
The outcome is a new basis for judging the current statements about this
problem by those who have used the Binet scale. Scores of investigators
by their tireless energy have provided data which may now be compared
for many types of delinquents and in many parts of the country. Some
sixty studies of deficient delinquents have been thus summarized from
the point of view of psychological tests.
Closely related to the problem of the frequency of feeble-mindedness
among delinquents is the question of the cause of delinquency. This has
further been considered in the light of the most important scientific
studies, especially those using the method of correlation. Among these
researches stands out the fundamental investigation of the causes of
criminality by Goring, a work which has received very inadequate
attention in this country, although it involved ten years study of a
group of 3000 convicts by the best quantitative methods. The careful
study of these objective investigations should take the question of the
relation of deficiency and delinquency out of the realm of opinion and
theory. It may be expected to have an important influence upon the
social handling of these problems. In this connection I have added a
chapter of suggestions which have grown out of my year's study of the
education of deficients and delinquents in European schools and
institutions.
To determine the size of the problem of dealing with deficients,
especially deficient delinquents, is a task of first importance. In
spite of our more conservative basis for judging the results with tests,
the necessity of caring for the feeble-minded remains the most vital
problem connected with social welfare. The movement for more individual
training in our schools, which has been gaining such headway, may also
be encouraged by the evidence that maladjustment to school work is also
definitely related to delinquency.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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