The Mentality of the Criminal Woman
REVIEWS AND CRITICISM. :Author: Jean Weidensall, Ph.D. Educa. Psychol. Monog. No. 14. Baltimore: Warwick and York, 1916. Pp. xx+322.
Professor G. M. Whipple, as editor of the series of monographs, contributes a preface in which he describes this book as “of prime importance to workers with mental tests and to practical penologists who S3ek to individualize punishment in such a manner as to meet the needs of the offender as well as the needs of the offence.” No student of clinical psj’chology, moreover, can afford to miss it.
An introduction by Dr Katherine Bement Davis outlines the history of the Laboratory of Social Hygiene in the New York State Reformatory for Women at Bedford Hills, N. Y., where most of Dr Weidensall’s work was done. “The problem,” explains Dr Weidensall, “grew out of her (Dr Davis’s) conviction that women proved guilty of critne might be more wisely sentenced than was possible under existing conditions. Altogether it seemed that the devise of some method for making an early and reasonably certain estimate of the criminal woman’s reformability was as vital an issue as was presenting itself to those who were dealing with her… . The determination of such a body of tests was, of course,” she continues, “an uncertain undertaking… . No one seemed altogether sure of what constituted reformation… . We set for ourselves the following arbitrary standard: if an individual has the capacity to learn a trade, to be industrially self-supporting, and is intelligent and stable enough to adapt herself to ordinary social and industrial conditions, she is worthy the chance of reformation. Whether a body of tests were discoverable that would establish the possession of these virtues was in itself problematical. … In the last analysis, without norms for the law-abiding woman’s mentality, of her earning capacity, of the amount and kind of training she has had, together with some data respecting the character of her home conditions, we should not be in a position to assume with any assurance on the basis of any tests whatsoever, how far a given individual who had not been 1 iw-abiding varies from, and may be expected to approximate to, normal conditions and prove reformable. “We had chosen a series of tests and had succeeded in testing with them a small group of expert college maids,” says Dr Weidensall, “when to our good fortune matters were greatly expedited by the discovery that the norms and data we so much needed were being in large part formulated by the Bureau of Vocational Guidance … in Cincinnati under the direction of Dr Helen Thompson Woolley… . The application of these tests to the Reformatory women constitutes the major portion of this monograph.
“The total list of our subjects’ scores,” Dr Weidensall remarks, “have been included in this monograph. They constitute a scale representative of an average and typical hundred criminal women who have been sentenced to a reformatory. The complete list of the Maid’s records is also given.” Of the hundred women tested, eighty-eight were used in the percentile tables and curves, and twelve foreign women were omitted because they had little facility in the Engli h language.
The standard tests which were given are: Physical tests.?(1) Height; (2) Weight; (3) Strength of Grip; (4) Steadiness of hand; (5) Rapidity of movement and indexes of fatigue.
Mental tests.?(6) Card sorting; (7) Cancellation of the letter a; (8) Memory span and the per cent of 7, 8, and 9 numbers remembered; (9) Substitution, (10) Completion of sentences; (11) Association by opposites. Besides these the series already in use in the Bedford laboratory was given to this group, including,?(1) Woodworth and Wells’ cancellation of numbers; (2) Binet’s memory for number series; (3) Facility and character of handwriting checked in terms of Ayers’ and Thorndike’s measuring scales and correlated with Binet age; (4) (a) Rate and character of reading, correlated with Binet age; (6) number of ideas recalled; (5) (a) Woodworth and Wells’ standard directions tests, easy and hard; (b) two new verbal directions tests; (6) Ability to tell time, correlated with Binet age; (7) Healy-Fernald tests (a) cross line A and B and the code, correlated with Binet age, (b) Construction A and B; (8) Formation of new motor habits, mirror drawing test as described by Whipple. In Chapter III, Experimental Data and Results, Dr Weidensall presents tables and graphs for the total group of Bedford women, the total group of Cincinnati children, various subgroups of Bedford women and Cincinnati children classified according to school progress, and finally for the eighteen efficient College Maids. The results of the two new verbal directions tests are not included. “It may be affirmed, however,” says Dr Weidensall, “that they bid fair to be useful… . They serve to isolate with considerable finality those who are slow to comprehend simple, every-day directions.”
Among the conclusions reached, the most important is that “Approximately 40 per cent of the Bedford 88 are decidedly less efficient in whatever these tests measure than is the average Cincinnati working girl of fifteen… . It may also be affirmed that about 33.3 per cent of the Bedford 88 are at least as intelligent and as efficient in whatever these tests measure as is the average Cincinnati working girl of fifteen.
“Even the more intelligent third of the Reformatory subjects differ very obviously and unmistakable in stability and emotional control from the group of Maids. The Maids are more self-contained; they constantly employ more mature judgment in the conduct of their affairs. They are more consistent in their aims and evaluation of themselves and their work. They are without the superstitiousness and egoism of the general run of Reformatory subjects. To most of them it was a simple matter to explain what the tests were for and to secure their co-operation. They were glad to do their best and were quite free from self-consciousness. The Reformatory women, on the other hand, unless they were tested during quarantine, as the Bedford 88 were, when there was no one to mislead them, demanded elaborate and often repeated explanations of the need to do their best, of what the tests were for, etc.” Dr Weidensall believes that “the success the institution has had in reforming so many of its charges has been due to a variety of things, among which two stand out most clearly. In the first place, it has been due to the skill, patience, and persistence with which even the dullest inmate has been taught better habits of work and play. In the second place, the capacity of this type of woman for personal devotion has been appreciated and fostered… . On the whole, she concludes, “two-thirds of them are tractable and responsive and some appreciable number of them at least, other things being equal, may be trained to be efficient and be taught a reasonable measure of self-control. Perhaps this would be true for more of them, if their sentences were longer. As this work has proceeded the writer has felt increasingly sure that it would have been true for a much higher per cent if each girl could be put through a careful examination in a clearing-house at the time of her first offense, sentenced in accordance with her needs and capacities, and then have been followed up until each had received the discipline and the training found to be essential to the development of her self-control, industrial efficiency, and good citizenship.” A. T.
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