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4. Dr. Bernard Glueck, Ossining, N. Y., said that while it might not be of any benefit to tell a feebleminded person that he was feebleminded, the principle of taking a patient into one's confidence to the extent of telling him the dangers and limitations confronting him was excellent. Dr. Glueck said further that we all agree that probation is a very excellent remedy, and yet every year more and more of us are anxious to find out why it does not work. A probation officer or a judge who recommends probation for a person just because he has to deal with a first offender ought to seek some other occupation. The first essential is diagnosis, for if you make a diagnosis correctly you can sometimes dispense with treatment. Probation is one of the most patent factors in restoring individuals to normal life. But probation is frequently a very bad remedy if blindly applied.

5. In her closing remarks, Miss Burleigh said that probation, institutional training and parole are only spokes in one wheel.

THE CAUSES OF DELINQUENCY

First Report of Subcommittee. Bernard Glueck, M. D., Chairman; Director, Psychiatric Clinic, Sing Sing Prison, Ossining, N. Y.

The creation within the Division on Delinquents and Correction of your Conference of a sub-committee on Causes of Delinquency adds further proof to the clarity and breadth of social vision which dominates your deliberations. At the same time it affords those of us who have been working in this field of criminalistics a welcome opportunity to exchange notes upon our findings and experiences with those of you whose preoccupation has been with other phases of this common movement for social hygiene and social control. Your committee, it may be confessed, found themselves from the first somewhat perplexed in their endeavors to decide upon the form this first annual report should take. We were, of course, fully agreed concerning the central importance of the subject of causation in criminology. Causation is the keystone of the problem. It not only has its intrinsic theoretical value, but it affects in a direct and decisive manner prognostication, treatment and prevention, whenever a rational solution of the problem is attempted.

For the same reason, reform in procedure, no matter how aggressive and well-intentioned, will at best be but a temporary expedient if it ignores the question of causation. The object, therefore, of your committee ought to be clear enough. We should find no difficulty in defining the direction in which our efforts might help to clarify the problem of criminality. We might even proceed to sketch, in tentative outline, at least, the manner in which a definition of causation may be rendered eminently practical in the administration of the individual delinquent. Such a practical definition should ultimately carry sufficiently dependable information for the guidance of the judge in the original disposition of a case, on the one hand, and, on the other, of the administrators of reformatory and correctional institutions in their endeavors to prepare the individual inmate for a more adequate adjustment to life in a free community. The crystallization of experience and practice in the definition of causation in individual cases into principles of fairly wide applica•

tion should ultimately make possible the development of proved and dependable criteria for prognosis.

Our aims are clear. The difficulty arises when we undertake to specify the processes for assuring the attainment of these aims. In view of this difficulty your committee were particularly happy to accept the invitation of Mrs. Hodder to meet at Framingham, Mass., for a preliminary discussion of methods and viewpoints.

This meeting of the committee, held on April 14th last, was attended by the following members and guests: Dr. Bernard Glueck, Chairman; Mrs. Jessie D. Hodder, Dr. William Healy, Dr. Herman Adler, Dr. V. V. Anderson, Dr. Abraham Myerson, Dr. Paul Wander, Mr. F. Leslie Hayford, Dr. Elizabeth A. Sullivan, Dr. Catherine A. Brannick. Dr. Edith R. Spaulding, Dr. Augusta F. Bronner, Dr. Anne Bingham, Miss Edith N. Burleigh, Mrs. Tess L. McKernon, Miss Inga M. Johnson, Miss Barbara V. Sanborn, secretary.

Study of Crime Causation versus Diagnosis of Individual Offenders

Those present were agreed upon the importance, as a first step in orientation, of a survey of what is being done in this country in the matter of studying criminal behavior and its causes. It became evident in the course of the discussion on this point that such diversity of method as admittedly exists among the workers in this field carries with it the danger of confusing the etiologic study of criminal behavior with the mere definition of personality, of the assumption of a cause-and-effect relationship where only coincidence exists.

Unsatisfactory as must be the status of methods which permit such extremely discrepant estimates of, say, the extent of feeblemindedness in reformatory and penal institution populations as are reflected in the current literature on the subject, the mischief caused by such inaccuracies can never equal that involved in suspending the search for causation when mental defect of some sort has been brought to light as a factor.

So grave a misconception through over-simplification of the problem must inevitably lead to an under-estimation or even to a total blindness for the many social-environmental factors which may, and frequently do, play a significant, yea, a determining role in the causation of criminal behavior even in pathological personalities. It also runs the danger of seeing in original, native endowment the sole constitutional determinants of behavior, and of failing to recognize the potency for continuous and lasting modifications of original tendencies that reside in the very processes of life and adaptation to the outside world. The feebleminded individual only less than the normal is never quite the same after having experienced, say, a prison sentence, as he was before. Since experience modifies behavior and the springs of behavior, and since the modification may have a pivotal significance in the causation of a given delinquent act or career, the stopping short with the mere diagnosis of feeblemindedness obviously misses an essential link in the chain.

The recent illuminating study by Dr. Bronner on Special Abilities and Disabilities furnishes impressive evidence that much still remains unsaid when a diagnosis of feeblemindedness has been made. A study of causation of crime, therefore, even in the individual case, involves much more than a mere diagnosis of the offender. It demands a diagnosis of the whole situation on the basis of dependable information concerning behavior reactions, habits, mental attitudes, predilections and idiosyncrasies of the individual in his daily life.

Preliminary Outline for Field Study

Such information can best be supplied through an intelligent and painstaking field inquiry, supplemented whenever possible by continued clinical observation within the institution. The laboratory examination, particularly the type whose scope is restricted to the mere gauging of intelligence grades by means of measuring scales, might be said to possess a value in the diagnosis of abnormal behavior similar to that which the chemical estimation of the functional activity of the kidneys might have in the diagnosis of Bright's Disease. It has little to do with a helpful understanding of behavior, nothing whatever, in many instances, with throwing light on the precise conditions that render behavior anti-social.

When we keep in mind still further the practical aspects of treatment and adjustment which a diagnosis should bear, the mere estimation of grade of intelligence must be of very limited value unless we restrict our conception of adjustment to mere institutional segregation. The committee believe that a case study should embrace as a minimum, at least an attempt to define:

1st. The type of personality one has to deal with. 2nd. Any temporary or lasting grafts or inroads upon^ the integrity of the personality, whether these have their origin in some constitutional pathological process, or in some deleterious environmental contacts. In other words, does one, for instance, merely deal with an epileptic or does one have to do, in a given instance, with an epileptic who is alcoholic and in whom the effects of alcohol, acting upon an epileptic personality, are the determining factors in the criminal act?

3rd. The relationship of the personality, as such, to the criminal act, or criminal habitus, and

4th. The relation of the superimposed disintegrating process, whether it be temporary or lasting, to the criminal act.

Such an approach ought to enable us to state, more or less accurately,

1st. The type of administrative problem one has to deal with. Is it exclusively or primarily a medical problem, as coming essentially within the province of the physician, or is it a social problem, that is to say, a problem the adequate solution of which demands attention to some external crime-provoking situation? Is it a problem predominantly for judicial adjudication, free alike from individual or sociologic pathological determinants, or is it, on the other hand, a medico-custodial problem such as is presented, for instance, by a segregable feebleminded individual?

2nd The significant or determining criminogenic factors in a given case:

(a) Of an hereditary nature.

(b) Of a constitutional nature.

(c) Of an environmental nature.

(d) Of a behavioristic nature.

3rd. On the basis of the foregoing, an outline of treatment or adjustment which would meet, as far as it is possible to meet them, the individual's and the community's requirements in the case.

That notwithstanding the rapid growth of the study of causation of delinquency, the above program still remains largely an ideal, with the exception of the noteworthy work of Healy with the juvenile delinquent, and of the work of others in cases involving clear psychotic situations, should serve as a challenge rather than as a discouragement. But progress toward this goal can be greatly accelerated and facilitated if instead of working in isolation, more or less indifferent to the efforts of others in the same field, and leaving clarification of principles to chance, we endeavor to proceed along the lines of a consciously and experimentally evolved program.

Nation-Wide Co-operation in Research

The first direction, therefore, along which the deliberations of your sub-committee may furnish a much-needed impetus, is that of a better understanding among the workers in this field concerning the nature and aims of scientific effort in the study of delinquency. As a concrete suggestion, your committee recommends that among its activities for the ensuing year a careful study of the nature, methods and scope of the work now being done in the field of scientific inquiry into the causes of delinquency, should occupy a prominent place. Such a survey would be of inestimable value to all of us, and its accomplishment might be powerfully assisted by the administrators and boards of institutions who are already alive to the importance of the problem of research, and are willing to give their professional workers an opportunity to prepare their material for publication.

It is an important feature and a real defect in the existing situation that was well expressed in these words by one of the members of your sub-committee: "It is most unfortunate that for the majority of people actively interested in criminalistics, the pressure of the daily work is so great that little time or energy remains for research." Your committee is of the opinion that much valuable information has already been accumulated along various lines, and that the whole problem of causation might be clarified to a considerable extent if this material were made more generally accessible.

Two distinct lines of procedure might effectually bring this about. First, the publication by the various investigators in this field of complete, unabridged case studies, with full theoretical discussiones of the problems involved in the given case; and, second, the publication of standardized statistical data on large groups of cases studied. It is very important that we agree on a more uniformly standardized method of statistical presentation, and your committee recommends this as another important undertaking among its future activities.

It would be regrettable if our insistance on more extensive publication of studies were to be taken to mean that we are either indifferent to or not fully appreciative of the many excellent studies in American criminalistics which have already come to light. Our point is that the time has come when our studies should form the source of dependable guiding principles for those who are charged with writing into statutes our practical recommendations, and we are as yet largely unprepared to convince them by furnishing an incontrovertible body of information. We are not ready, as representatives of a specialized discipline in the field of the social sciences, to present a well rounded-out program for the action of legislatures, a program concerning which there is a consensus of opinion, at least among ourselves. Our studies frequently lead to significant criticisms of legal and social procedure, but they lack still more frequently detailed constructive suggestions of a practically attainable nature. If we, as workers in this field, are to meet adequately the challenge which our critical contributions have provoked, our material must be organized with this aim in view.

Point of Inception for Study of the Criminal

It is somewhat of a question as to where in the process of legal administration the diagnostician should come in contact with the prisoner. At what stage of the intricate procedure of the criminal law should the delinquent be studied? Those who are looking forward to the day when the community's viewpoint toward the offender will find its inspiration less in a moralistic or a dramatic interest and more in a broad humanistic conception of adjustment and maladjustment, insist that the study of the offender should be begun even before arraignment. They even go a step further and insist that the study of abnormal behavior, or more specifically of misbehavior, should be undertaken before the individual comes in conflict with the law. There is much greater feasibility in this plan than might be admitted to be the case at first thought. In fact, where the school authorities are fully alive to the nature and objects of public education, timid beginnings have already been made in the direction of studying individuals during school life.

A certain degree of dependable predictability is already possible wherever opportunity for the study and observation is offered in connection with an adequate system of ungraded classes. With the growth of a clearer appreciation on the part of the school teacher of the broader social aspects of her work, such predictions will grow in reliability and will eventually justfy radical measures of control in the individual case.

The very excellent and progressive work that is being carried on in some of our juvenile courts, points conclusively to the great economy —material and human—to be effected by intelligent early diagnosis.