* UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS LIBRARY K'2>\G> C - co p. | N0 { Z „ i J 91 rj THE CRIMINAL BOY.* SOME OBSERVA¬ TIONS BASED UPON 112 CASES. . V-\ e t -VT- CHICAGO. Let my first words in this brief paper be words of protest against a somewhat extreme modern tendency to excuse the perpetrator of any crime, provided he is of relatively immature years. There are organized efforts on the part of certain groups of well-motived, eminently re¬ spectable people, not only to themselves excuse crime of any sort, provided the perpetrator is under 25 years of age, but also organized efforts to induce everyone else, especially those who ad¬ minister the law, to take this same view. They would seek to have us regard youth itself as a psychopathic disorder, especially as applied to the male sex, though for some reason they are not equally generous toward the girl criminal who may have committed a less flagrant offense. Furthermore, the word “boy” in the criminal courts has come to be a term of much wider comprehension and much greater inclusion than is given to it anywhere else. It is almost a travesty to observe the 18-year-old male as an honest bread-winner, almost a man of affairs in the every-day walks of life, in business, in so¬ ciety, while his 25 or 26-year-old uncle, who steals an* automobile or shoots up the town and commits robbery with a gun, and possibly mur- *Read before the Chicago Medical Society, April 19, 1916. — 2 — dcr, sniffles and cringes his way into the halls of justice, begging to be considered as “only a boy,” and the judge who presides over the court is besought by organized groups of people to consider his crime as only a boyish prank and that the perpetrator thereof should be given “an¬ other chance.” And if for good and sufficient reasons the presiding judge fails to be moved by any such maudlin sentimentality, these same ex¬ cusing agencies seek to have this poor misguided 25-year-old boy examined and if possible made out a “moron” and therefore unaccountable and irresponsible for his criminal act. It seems ridiculous to call the high school boy at the age of fifteen “Mister,” regarding him to all intents and purposes as a man, and then six, eight or ten years later when he is arrested for crime, call him a “boy.” There may be and probably are many good reasons for a special branch court called the “Boys’ Court,” but it should never be forgotten that to justify its existence it must be more than a “Court of Excuses.” My purpose in presenting the results of my } study and observation of 112 boys charged with crime, is to show that on the whole, the mental life and development of the criminal boy has but few unusual features, that his mental powers unfold in about the same way as do those of the boy who does not clash with the laws of society or get into trouble calling for court adjudica¬ tion. These 112 boys were chiefly inmates of the county jail of Cook County. Eight were in¬ mates of county jails in counties other than Cook; four were in the Pontiac Reformatory; — 3 — three in the House of Correction. For statistical purposes I am compelled to use the word “boy” with the same poetic license as previously alluded to, i.e., my group includes males ranging in age from 16 to 25 years. Let me briefly summarize the results of my . v. 1 1 :1'i .;«• » 17 it «•. li^MSI investigation.: , , . . 1. Tesfs o\ 'ifie Senses—Tim tests of vision of these boys incarcerated in our criminal irfstitu- tions reveal the fact^ffiat 9.5 per cent! lia^e de¬ fective vision, mostly a minor ‘ astigmatism in character. This is not such a ”reriikrkadle ’de¬ ficiency to the writer’s min'd when he recalls IMt as a result of investigations upon the children in the public schools of Illinois directed by him in the five years, 1892-1897 inclusive, it was found that 11 per cent, of all the school children of IlTiiloSg have defective vision—and further¬ more these defects of vision increase in fre¬ quency as we pass from the lower to the higher grades in the public schools. If the average defect of vision in children of school age from 6 to 16 is 11 per cent., then the 9.5 per cent, of visual defects in boys in the jails, ranging from 16 tQ.*Sfe' years of age, is not a great variance t ■ i < . r J. > j j; . ,, n ,,1,1, from the average and is really in favor of the jail boy. ,. t , r Twenty of these 112 boys, or 18 per. cent.", had defective hearing in one ear or both, chiefly as a result of adenoids or catarrhal diseases such as are the sequellas of scarlet fever. But at the same time please remind yourselves that 19 per cent, of all the children in the public schools of Illinois have defective hearing in one ear or both. The sense for the perception of the finer dis¬ criminations of touch is somewhat blunter in the boys confined in jail than in the bpys outside; also the perversions of taste are more marked. . It was not an unusual occurrence when applying vinegar to the tongue tip of, the blindfolded boy in jail to have him state th$,t it tasted like \yhiskey instead of the normal answer “sour/- Yet by far the (arger majority of these. 112 bpys correctly discriminated between sweet, sour, salt and bit¬ ter. Ap'd in passing, may I state that in nearly every case where the sense of taste was perverted an examination of the boy’s mouth disclosed that the tongue and the mucous linings of the mouth were covered wjth a foul, mossy, yellow browm coating as a result, ol cirgarette indulgence. 2. TfsU pf Mvyriory.-—\ find almost without ex¬ ception that these boys cpnfined in institutions have better visual than auditory memories. They remember the things they see .better than the things they hear. But they also remember the concrete better than they do the abstract. For example, if, after the manner of the usual labora¬ tory test, I place a series of figures sucbf ejs f, 9, 6, 3, 7, 5, 1, 8 on the observation shutter fqr 10 secopds and tbpn cover up tjiese figures the boy beipg tested may only recall four of the eight figures. But if I expose for the same period a series of playing cards, e. g., the four of dia¬ monds, the nine of hearts, the six of clubs, the trev of spades, etc., throughout the series of eight cards, he will correctly remember at least six or seven of the ei^ht and in the exact order pre¬ sented. Within the last two years some friends of mine in examining boy prisoners in the county — 5 — jail reported that certain boys could not grasp or comprehend number combinations aggregating greater than seven. That is, they c,ould add 4 and 2, 3 and 4, etc., but could not grasp a, sum greater than seven. Yet these same boys wheii , engaged in playing the game of cards called “Rhum” would add quickly and correctly such humbbrs as 8, 5 and 7, in counting the penalty cards remaining in hand. My point is that such a boy’s mental development must not be rated or , established by his inability to add or count jieyOiid , seven when under the incentive of actual gslmes of contest he is dble to comprehend number rela¬ tions many times greater. In this same connection we should also recall that it is not only the jail boy who has better eye memory than he has ear memory. The child study work ih schools, tests of 200,000 school chil¬ dren in' these Uhited States, reveals that in our public ' schools the normal boy . has this same 1 . memory characteristic. The normal bby hds a better memory for the things seen than.fop things heard. He is eye-minded rather than ear-minded. On the other hand, girls have better ear memories than boys, chiefly because the girl attends more closely to things heard while the boy attends more closely to the things he sees. 3. Powers of Judgment and Comparison Nearly every one of the 112 boys charged with crime possessed to the full degree the power of making judgments as to values. This was evi¬ denced in many ways, notably in their exercise of the trading instinct. Their trades and dickers among themselves and with other inmates revealed keen and accurate judgment of values of articled — 6 —■ possessed and articles sought in exchange; indeed, the majority of them barter with the keen busi¬ ness sense of embryonic merchant princes. Their judgment of danger involved in carrying out cer¬ tain predatory criminal acts also evinces the high degree to which the faculty of judgment is de¬ veloped. To illustrate: The average boy crim¬ inal has been led to believe on mere traditional basis that it is an offense against the United States government to break open a car seal. Therefore, in his depredation, unless he is old in criirip, lji£- 4 ^oid£ freaking car sea^s, but \yill com¬ mit all sorts of infractions against city ordinances and state laws. Why? For the reason that to him the United States courts are great impersonal agencies punishing all regardless of excuses, while the state and city courts are always capable of being thwarted in meting out punishment, and since such acts are fraught with less danger the criminal boy will break the lock of a house or cigaar! store, or. hold up a drug store or saloon, or comrhit robbery with a gun upon a pedestrian, or murder the agent of an elevated station, rather than break open a car seal, basing his judgment as to such conduct upon his own experience and that of others. 4. As to the Imagination .—In passing rapidly I can oilly say that my studies show that these self¬ same criminal boys are deficient’to a degree in constructive imagination. It seems somewhat difficult for them to picture the joys and rewards of methods of living other than those that have brought trouble upon them. They do possess, however, more than ordinary ability in reproduc¬ tive imagination, which in a degree offsets the — 7 — deficiency in constructive ability. They copy bet¬ ter than they initiate. And last, As to Reasoning .—These 112 boys as a group show no material deficiencies in inductive reasoning. They are, however, below pgr in rea¬ soning deductively, i. e., from premise to con¬ clusion. This rapid review of my investigations may suffice to reveal the basis of my conclusion that the average boy confined in jail is not grieviously defective in mental power or mental development. His being in jail is the “end-result” of misdirec¬ tion of mental energy and the misapplication of mental ability. In nearly everyone of the 112 cases the predicament of the boy was due to the failure to bring him face to face with the conse- quencefe of his act at the commission of his first offense earlier in his career. The first infraction, a minor one, was excused; he soon commits an¬ other and more serious one, and so on until finally his offense is so bald or some judge awakens to the seriousness of the situation and the boy is confined in jail. To illustrate: a school boy was found to be stealing from other pupils, from his teachers and from the board of educa¬ tion. Intercession was made, no punishment meted by parent or principal; he was “excused” and the offense glossed over with polite phrase¬ ology. The enormity of the crime of stealing was never forcefully presented to his mind. In fact, be was made to feel that he did not steal but only “took” things and did not really men to do that. Later he was in the Bovs’ Court for stealing from merchants in the neighborhood; has developed the stealing habit; is a thief, and still excuses — 8 — galore were offered in the hope of his escaping punishment. My contention is this: Always excusing for crime makes a pathological per¬ sonality out of a boy who at the outset of his criminal career was normal in every mental at¬ tribute and would have remained normal but for j these excusing agencies . May I invite your brief consideration to .an¬ other phase of this study. There are occasiQnally, criminal boys ttdio are mentally defective. But these defects are best revealed by intensive in¬ dividual study of the particular boy in question and the circumstances surrounding the commis¬ sion of the particular crime in question rather than by any system of laboratory routine. And do not conclude when I say this that J am speak¬ ing without laboratory experience: I.f the per¬ sonal allusion will be pardoned, the. iwriter begs to state that he installed the first psycholdgical laboratory in this state at the State University of Illinois in 1892; that during the five years he was head of this department at your state uni¬ versity he conducted and directed tests upon the mental faculties of thousands bf normal children in the public schools; that in 1897 he established at Kankakee the first laboratory of psychology in an insane hospital in this coudtry. This was made possible through the hearty cooperation of one of your members, Dr. Wm. G. Stearns, then superintendent at Kankakee. Later, in coopera¬ tion wdth the late Dr. W. S. Christopher, he also assisted materially in making the Child Study Department a vital part of Chicago’s public school system. — 9 — Based upon this experience and upon the re¬ sults of the last nine years of study of confined criminals or those charged with crime, I have reached th6’conclusion that the routine laboratory methods have but limited value in disclosing the ! mental development and mental efficiency of the criminal bqy. May I illustrate? A boy within g few months qf graduation from one of the Chi¬ cago high schools was arrested for stealing rail¬ road property and selling tfye same. He was con¬ victed. Later he $fas ’ paroled, gnd still later was ye^rrested fpr violation of his parole. He Was id years old. In the high school he ,had 'prayed intellectual power quite above the average of his ^ge and race. When rearrested interces¬ sion was rpade for him and a laboratory examina¬ tion was ordered by the presiding judge. The laboratory report showed his mental age to be less than eight years, and that his acts should be interpreted as those of an eight year old boy; and this in face of the fact that the boy had passed through all the grades of the Chicago public schools with credit and in school achievement was above the average of his age. For my part I regard the combined conclusions of the score of teachers who had been in daily touch with this boy in the school rooms, for more than ten years, as a better criterion upon which to base one’s judgment of his mental status than in the arbi¬ trary dictum of the most skilled laboratory man who put him through an hour’s examination by the Binet-Simon tests. These tests have value but reveal only a very small segment of the entire circle of the boy’s activities. We should at least not mgke claims as to the infallibility and com- — 10 - pleteness of these and similar laboratory tests that are more extravagant than the claims of those who originated these tests. There is also a tendency to arbitrarily interpret the findings evoked by the Binet-Simon and similar tests. To illustrate: One of the tests of the higher mental processes of the fifteen- year-old which I quote is this: in the course of examination the statement is made to The boy that “my neighbor has received some ,f sihgfu’lar visitors; he receives ‘ one aft£r dhotfr^h,‘a dblitor, a lawyer, and a priest. What is gbihg hA' at my neighbor’s?” The correct response, according to the books, is “He is very ill; some one is very ill there—dead,” and this response is the necessary one if the boy examined is to make the fifteen- year-old mental grade. A boy recently convicted of murder, when asked this selfsame question, re¬ plied to the writer that the doctor, lawyer and priest were all three there “to get money.” My contention is that in so answering this stereotyped question lie exercised his more comj'dicatedkne'ntal processes as fully and as well as if he had given the answer “illness” or “death,” as designated by the book as the only correct answer. Some of the boys who are the beneficiaries of these well motived efforts themselves heap ridi¬ cule upon the methods of those seeking to assist them in escaping punishment. Two boys recently in an East Sixty-third street billiard hall or pool room were conversing when a third associate entered. He, had just been released from the Boys’ Court. He was asked “What did they do to you, Bed?” “Nothing,” came the answer. “Last time they told me I was a moron but now — 11 — I am a high grade imbecile.” A little later he successfully negotiated a difficult shot on the pool table and one of his associates in compli¬ menting him laughingly remarked, “If a high grade imbecile can make a crack shot like that I am going down to court and get some of the same dope.” Two years ago I examined in the Cook county jail a boy convicted of murder. The evidence was conclusive. His lawyer, as a last resort, sought an examination. He was found sane. On leaving him he suggested, “Well, Doctor, if you can’t make me out crazy, can you not at least make a ‘maroon’ out of me?” He had heard the word “moron” and knew of it as a term to get out of jail with, but had not yet learned its correct pro¬ nunciation. I make this explanation that no one will think he was using the term as applied to the loyal sons of the University of Chicago. No one will grant more readily than I that the Binet-Simon and other tests have a proper and important use, but within limits. In addition, we must use every recourse possible to gain knowledge of the particular boy as related to the particular crime with which he is charged. As physicians, as men and women of affairs, we must assist in making plain to the boy that the laws of society are as inexorable as the laws of health; that the violation of the laws of the state cannot help but bring disaster to the guilty individual. That we must impress upon the mind of the criminal boy, the boy already confined, charged with crime, that his life in its various relations to society must be readjusted according to law. As physicians going in and out of the 3 0112 098210948 - 12 - homes of our citizens we can do large things in leading the boy to see from earliest childhood that wholesome civil freedom as well as com¬ fortable physical freedom comes alone to those who travel a course in harmony with law rather than one that runs counter to it. That violation brings one in contact with the rough edges of stern law; that this contact not only wounds and pains, but invites disaster. As physicians, scien¬ tifically trained, but broad-minded, deep chested, large hearted, with a passion for service of our city, state and nation, in behalf of the boys of todair who become the men of tomorrow, we can and should become leaders of thought and action in creating in the boys and in their parents a wholesome respect for law. With patience, with devotion to calling, with breadth of vision that perceives the final goal in the evolution of the state, we can, as physicians, accomplish almost as much in curing the pathological conditions of society that makes criminal boys as we can in curing the pathological conditions that obtain in the individual patient who presents himself at hospital or office. We can and should make two blades of wholesome regard for law grow where but one grew before. In social medicine as well as individual physical treatment, prevention is better than cure. By seeking the enforcement of civil and criminal law, and assisting in creating a respect for law, we are making for, rather than against, the mental health of the otherwise criminal boy.