Part 2

“You are right,” he said, “those things are all very well but they are not fundamental. None of those things counts a heap towards reformation; the honor system is simply a more sensible, more effective method--it’s a fairer method of preserving discipline, an easier method of running your institutions. It does not touch your real man. It is all a matter of habit. Now take those Dannemora prison fellows with whom I worked in the forests around the prison; they were repeaters, many of them hardened evil doers. And take these fellows here--young fellows--and just hear them talk among themselves, as I had a chance to hear them talk, night after night--nothing but crime. It’s an obsession. Naught else has any interest for them. If it is not their own exploits, then it is the latest from the newspapers (for you don’t suppose all the regulations and punishments on earth can keep the newspapers out of a prison). The only thing they are interested in is crime. Everybody talks crime. How can you reform a fellow whose mental habit is crime? My idea is this: You have got to change their topic of conversation. You’ve got to coax their minds to a higher level. And you can’t just tug at them from above. You have to be taken into their community, into their confidence, you’ve got to be one of them. You must push their thoughts upward from within instead of pulling from above.

“My officers are all first class men. They are graduates of schools of agriculture or forestry. And they have all lived in close contact with men. They sleep in the same room, on the same rough bunk in our three-decker, go to bed with the boys, rise with them. Their food is exactly the same--neither different nor more. They do their day’s work just like the boys. Their hardship is no less than that of the boys. And the boys know that and feel it. Now, see, my point is this, I have a right to expect the same thing from the boys that I expect from my men, who are required to undergo the same hardships as the boys. In this way I establish an equality which enables us to get into the community of the boys, and naturally control their conversation and their thoughts. Thus they are really reformed without their knowing it.”

The spirit among the boys and the officers was certainly remarkable. They joked, called each other by their first names, and were “kidding” each other at a great rate. I was wondering what would happen when the question of authority arose. I was not disappointed. Alongside the joyous camaraderie, there was a willing recognition of unquestioned authority.

“You’ll be up in court, Kid; you went fish’n without permission”, I heard one of them yell to another, and a little later, when one of the recent arrivals wanted to go to the farmhouse to see the incubators, an older member of the colony instructed him in a casual way.

“You gotta git p’rmission from Bob first.” “Bob” is Mr. Rosenbluth.

How open and frank the spirit of the conduct of the “court” is, and how it reflects the character of the whole institution, I could only guess, for unfortunately no session of the court could be held that Sunday, as is the custom. In the midst of conversation of a group of some ten of the boys one of them remarked that there would be no court that day.

“We ain’t got many cases, Bob, only one fight, one fishin’ without asking, and one fellow smoking out of time.” There was no secret report or accusation; only a cooperative policing, with apparently no trace of grudge. Yet the boys average probably more than twenty years of age.

The unfortunate circumstances that prevented court session, as well as the regular base-ball game and morning service that Sunday, was the lamentable drowning of one of the boys while taking a swim, the Thursday preceding. Despite the presence of several good swimmers, and their desperate efforts to save him, he went down beyond aid. The river was dragged the same day, but no trace of his body was found. The next day and the day following was the real test, in my opinion of the spirit of the Farm. The officers were preoccupied, the coroner, undertaker, reporter were busy about the place; some of the boys were taken from their regular work to search for the body; supervision was practically naught. But the season was late. The farm behind time. Work had to be continued. And the boys did work, though with hearts heavy with real sorrow. The next day, Saturday, the coroner dynamited the river in order to bring the body to the surface. Curiosity was added to possible desire to shirk work. Yet all but those aiding in the search were at their ploughs or hoes. Several acres were ploughed and five acres of corn planted by less than twenty boys on Saturday afternoon alone.

Early next morning the body was found by one of the boys on search duty. The body was taken to Middletown, three miles away, by the coroner’s undertaker. Morning service was postponed. The rest of the morning was given over to bathing and to visits to the boys. The visitors roamed the farm with the boys at will. The day was ideal, and with the remarkably attractive scenery, helped lift the gloom from the little colony. Even death cannot darken very long such a beautiful spring day in Orange County. Dinner came along for a hungry two-score, with spirits still somewhat subdued, but no longer blackened by the shadow of death. To the regular dinner crowd there were added now the wife and child of the officer occupying the farmhouse.

There were three long tables, with benches on either side, all constructed of boards such as were used for building the bunkhouse. The carpet of the dining room was rich green grass, and the ceiling green foliage and blue sky, all gilded with bright warm sunshine. A brisk fresh breeze made electric fans superfluous. Roast beef, gravy, brown baked potatoes, coffee with real milk in plenty, (from the four cows borrowed from another institution) and the most delicious of lemon pies rapidly disappeared.

Soon after dinner a service was held. I confess I was quite curious to see this service, without minister, conducted by “Bob,” separated from his group by the deepest of sectarian differences. At these services occurrences of the week and plans of the coming week are talked over, and a kind of rough-and-ready, heart-to-heart moralizing is done. The subject, this day, was of course the death of their unfortunate comrade. I did not know then, that the most impressive of all funeral services I have ever seen, was to come that afternoon. The boys and instructors (that is what the officers are called) lay in a group on the grass under the shade of tall trees, and Bob sat on a stump. His face showed signs of the deep anxiety and sleeplessness of the last few days. The talk was brief. The boys were asked to meditate over the decease of their friend, and draw their own lessons. One point only was enlarged upon. Some neighboring farmers had criticised the management for continuing to work during the two days following the day of the accident. “If sorrow is heartfelt, it does not require that duty towards the living be sacrificed to empty form in regard to the dead.” Only the words were simpler, more explicit.

The afternoon was spent in gathering flowers to give to the parents of the dead comrade, who were to arrive that afternoon. There was a wreath of white lilacs, and bunches of lilies of the valley, and white wild flowers. When the parents arrived, boys and instructors stood bare-headed in front of the old dilapidated framehouse that had been patched up to serve for the various purposes of the farm, and as a kind of general field headquarters. Some twenty to thirty feet from the house each boy had planted a tree on arbor day. After a few words from Bob, the tree that had been planted by the dead boy was dug up and transplanted to a place of honor. Then amid deep silence, the father spoke to the comrades of his lost son. It is impossible for me to render the simple words in their true effect. He hoped that the death of his son might teach the rest of the boys the same lesson that his life could no longer teach, namely, that the efforts of good men could not fail to save them from evil careers, if they brought but a little good-will towards those that were willing to help them regain their true selves.

Not an eye remained dry, and the instructor who offered the simple closing prayer--in the absence of any minister--could hardly choke down his tears. They had lost their son when he was all but saved from the abyss of crime, by nature and by good men.

Under the stress of such an intense day, following days of hard labor under untoward conditions, I came to understand why Mr. Rosenbluth insisted so much upon the personality of his helpers; why he had spent large sums of his own private funds, to persuade men to leave better paying, often more than twice as renumerative positions, to come to the farm. These men sacrificed money, comfort, even the one day in the week freedom, to spend all their time with the boys, to reform them by sheer force of personality. In labor, in fun, in sorrow they understood and were understood by the boys. They could laugh with them and keep silence with them. I want to congratulate them all: Mr. Rosenbluth and his aids Messrs. Blue, Buck, Ford, Wissner for their remarkable ability to dispense with the pleasure of pleasure-seeking, for the pleasure of service.

The success of the New Hampton Farms as an experiment in reformation lies surely not in its fertile soil, its excellent location, the unprecedented plans for the classification of its future inmates, for the erection of the future buildings. The crops of the farm in this handicapped year may prove economically profitable or disastrous. Individual inmates may escape, or otherwise disgrace the little colony. Many may fall again into temptation, among bad companions, filthy, immoral environments, and their own vicious inclinations. But the farm has already shown that there can be a vastly different spirit between a different type of officers and the same inmates, and that this “spirit can be built up with the institution.”

PSYCHOLOGICAL WORK WITH OFFENDERS FOR THE COURTS

By William Healy, M. D.

Director Psychopathic Institute of the Juvenile Court of Chicago

The main trend of our findings and the outlook now, after five years’ study of offenders in connection with courts, is requested. It is plain that in a short paper only a few of the more prominent points can be touched. We must leave analyses and adequate descriptions for our larger publications. However, we can here discuss some of the outcomes and limitations of applied methods. In this summary fashion, taking stock may be wise just at this time, when the practice of psychology is beginning to be exploited similarly to the practice of medicine. Also, lack of knowledge in many quarters of this new work and perhaps, the recent statement of a well-known clinical psychologist to the effect that psychology (or at least he says pseudopsychology) can render no aid in the courts, call for review of the facts.

Concerning the part that psychology in its practical, applied, clinical aspects should play in the court work, we may consider the following. View it as you may, there is no escape from the basic fact that conduct, social behavior, is a product of the mental life of the individual. The most direct driving forces of misconduct therefore are very properly to be regarded as material for study which comes well within the province of the science of mental life. (It must have been this which led the great jurist and criminalist, Gross, to state that psychological valuations must ultimately become the basis of all criminal law.) An individual differential psychology is involved which requires knowledge of the bearings which many varieties of mental conditions have upon action.

At the beginning of our work, we were advised by the most eminent psychologists that the field was virgin. Everywhere we were told that the use of the standard apparatus of the laboratory, the ergograph, plethsygmograph, the chronoscope, all had no bearing on our problem, for the results from none of them had been found to be correlated with any traits or conditions which were of peculiar significance in offenders. Many hopes that had been expressed by those who ardently desired the rapid practical extension of psychology had not borne fruition. We were told that methods must be worked and normal sought out. In other words, it was deliberately stated by many, that neither classical nor experimental psychology had as yet anything to offer for dealing with this human problem. To introduce the usual and often complicated devices of the laboratory, which are for measuring and discriminating the simpler elements of mental life, would be, it was said, to delude ourselves and be in the position of misleading others. In accordance with our appreciation of this consideration we have all along proceeded by methods which seem to have in them the greatest proportion of common sense, and to be most likely to show correlation between offending careers and characteristics possibly at the root of criminalistic tendencies.

Moreover, as time has gone on we have become more and more convinced that those who study offenders should seek not only for peculiarities and disabilities, correlated with tendencies to offend, but also for potentialities, for special abilities which might be utilized for educational or occupational success. To grade the delinquent downwards is not sufficient. There may be the possibility of constructive work with him. As a matter of fact, some of the most encouraging results of our own efforts have come through the discovery that the offender was suited for something which he had never had the chance of doing, and that a corresponding adjustment of his affairs brought cessation of delinquencies. This has been even true with certain types of defectives.

Early in working with our cosmopolitan population, (and to a less extent the trouble would have shown itself among those of one language) we saw that any method of mental evaluation which was based largely upon language tests, whether or not given by such a questionaire method as that of Binet was quite unfair. Language, our universal method of communication, does not cover all the social graces, all the social values, nor does adeptness in the use of it mean unusual general ability. In fact, nothing has been any more striking in our findings than that some otherwise normal individuals have special defects for language, and that some general defectives have such powers in manipulating words that pass everywhere, even in courts, as normal and even bright. It was soon felt that over and beyond tests which involve the medium of communication, it would be more profitable to observe a performance with concrete material which possibly might be arranged to measure some of the socially most valuable mental qualities.

Such performance tests have had a great growth in these five years, as emanating from several centers, until at present they are quite widely used. For work with offenders, there is at present a wide range of tests to choose from. For practical clinical work even more tests are desirable, and it may be that some of those now used will be gradually discarded and replaced by others. It stands out very clearly that what one would like to know particularly about offenders is how they grade, not only in general intelligence, but also on tests which may possibly evaluate the powers of apperception, of mental representation, of self-control, of the ability to learn by experience, and so on. Defects along these lines seem likely to stand in much greater correlation to delinquent tendencies than any other we could name. Special educational and industrial disabilities may make for social failure and so may indirectly lead also to delinquency. It is usually not difficult to ascertain the nature of these defects. A few steps towards discovery of vocational aptitudes can also be made by the use of tests.

We still think that the early advice to keep our testing methods simple and direct was thoroughly sound. It is evident that we can use with scientific safety the Binet scale for grouping young children and defectives up to the level of 10 years. Beyond this, by using a wide range of other tests, we can discriminate other subnormal groups who are either defective in general or in special abilities.

In the present state of our knowledge concerning methods discretion is needed in the selection of tests. Those primarily adapted to one group may not be valid for another social or age group. We have just finished an interesting comparison of the results of a certain performance test in which college young women did worse on the average than younger persons. We have all too little proof that tests worked up for children are equally valid for adults. It is proposed that we render decisions upon, for instance, findings by the Binet tests, and yet it does not seem likely by the sort of results we ourselves have been getting that they could be as freely applied to adults as to children for the purposes of social diagnosis, of discriminating those who are bound to be unsuccessful. We must remember that no one as yet has given us the results of these tests as applied to hundreds of ditch diggers, or section hands, who in their lowly spheres form most useful members of society.

When it comes to the interpretation of tests we need to exercise much discretion. It is most dangerous to proceed to render diagnosis or prognosis without knowledge of the individual’s background in heredity, developmental history and social environment. Such items as previous illnesses, present physical condition, debilitating habits, and educational opportunities need to be noted. In our work the question of epileptic variations alone is frequently before us. We see very clearly that grave injustice to the situation may be done without taking such possible features of the case into account.

Very different phases of psychological work with offenders properly are taken up from the viewpoint of human conduct in general being the province of the student of human life. Quite the minority of offenders show mental peculiarities which can be learned by testing and then related to their delinquencies. Let us look at some comparisons of offenders as we have grouped them by most careful study. Our court work has been in the main to see the problem cases. Undoubtedly most of the suspected psychotic or defective cases have been selected and brought for study. We have made a series of 1000 recidivists, repeated offenders, the average age of whom is about 15 years. These have been graded by mental tests most carefully and we have found the following:

Per cent. Considerably above ordinary in ability 3 Ordinary or fair in ability 55 Poor in ability 9 Mentally dull, but suffering from defective physical conditions, or disease, or bad habits, which may be the cause of the dullness 8 Sub-normal mentally, but not strictly feebleminded 8 Feebleminded (moron grade) 9 Feebleminded (imbecile grade) 1 Psychoses, ranging from well marked cases of insanity to temporary, but well-marked mental aberrations 7

I have found in various parts of the country considerable doubt expressed in regard to various statements which have been made of the proportions of the feebleminded which probably would be found by studying juvenile offenders. Teachers, judges, and probation officers have scouted the idea that there was upwards of 25 per cent. feebleminded among the children which come before a Juvenile court. Our own long investigation would certainly show otherwise. But of course we have never seen all of the thousands of children which come into the Chicago court yearly, so we have never been able to definitely answer the question of just what proportion is mentally defective.

This year I have asked the assistant director of the Institute, Miss Bronner, to undertake at regular periods cross-section studies of the population temporarily held in the Detention Home. These probably would average lower than if one could see every case which was brought into court, for frequently the most normal children who have been engaged in a single offense are not brought into the Home. The results which she is obtaining I shall merely hint at, but they serve to show that the psychological study of delinquency involves very much more than the discrimination of the feebleminded.

Any one who observed the considerable proportion of 7th and 8th grade and high school girls and boys who become severely delinquent will not be surprised at our findings. At least 91 per cent. of the girls and 84 per cent. of the boys have been found so far to group normal mentally, if we take the 12 year old tests of Binet as a standard. Now, as a matter of fact, I am not at all inclined without further investigation to denominate anyone as mentally defective who can not pass the 12 year test, because of the obvious weakness of these particular five tests for judging such an important point. But still we have been willing to place this criticism for the moment aside. There are several details of this given study which might be interesting to discuss, but this will be done elsewhere.

The above statements are not offered so much in opposition to other estimates of the proportion of defectives among offenders as to show the possible variation of findings in different situations where delinquents may be seen, and to show the nature of the work of the psychologist in courts. We can easily see why institutions for delinquents contain a greater proportion of mental defectives than is found in court work, for obviously the brighter ones are handled under probation, are found positions and succeed better on the outside because they have more foresight and learn better by experience. It may be that a larger percentage of the defectives will be found in studying older groups in court work. Perhaps the brighter individuals cease earlier to be offenders. I await with interest comparative findings from the newly established municipal court psychopathic institutes, in Boston and in Chicago. But of course fair general statistics can never be made without covering an unselected series of court cases, such as we have recently undertaken.

We must not find reason from the above figures to underestimate the exceedingly important problem of feebleminded offenders. From their ranks one has to come to know some of the most frequent repeaters, some of the worst teachers of vice, and even some of the most adept in such skilled criminalistic occupations as burglary. To answer the problem of their care would be to relieve a strain on society that is not even suggested by a statement of their proportionate numbers among offenders. No one has been more surprised than we ourselves to find the extent to which morons are actively engaged in criminalistics, and are even definitely the instructors of others. The general notion that this class is merely easily led is altogether erroneous.

The extent of our findings of a single disease, namely epilepsy, among our repeated offenders we have often commented on. We need only to mention that about 7 per cent. have been found afflicted with various forms of this trouble. After all, this is only what might have been expected from similar observations of others elsewhere. The psychic manifestations of this disease make the victim a fit subject of study by the psychopathologist.