ANTISOCIAL behavior: DELINQUENCY AND CRIME 393 



Treatment of any kind, either legal or scientific, applied 

 to juvenile delinquents, must be understood to have very 

 direct relationship to the whole crime problem. This is 

 provable through many findings in all civihzed countries 

 that the careers of habitual criminals in the great majority 

 of cases begin during youth and even childhood. This is an 

 enormously significant fact, one that has not yet been fully 

 recognized in its importance for the lav^ and also for science. 



Lest there be a mistake, it must be stated that a few 

 courts and institutions dealing with adult criminals employ 

 psychologists and psychiatrists, but this is almost entirely 

 from a discriminatory standpoint, separating the sheep 

 from the goats, mental defectives and those showing aberra- 

 tional characteristics from the more normal. The "Briggs 

 Law," providing in Massachusetts for the psychiatric 

 examination and classification of those convicted of felonies, 

 is the most advanced provision for this type of work. So 

 far, only very hmited modifications of treatment are offered 

 as the outcome of such examinations. As an example of 

 the tendency to a modern scientific approach, we may take, 

 however, the work done with adults in the probation depart- 

 ment of the New York City Court of General Sessions 

 where attempt at social and individual diagnosis is regarded 

 as prerequisite to treatment. 



DOES CRIMINALITY BETOKEN ABNORMALITY 



The reader of a work on human biology is, naturally, 

 interested to know what statement science has to offer 

 concerning the essential nature of those who are offenders 

 against society. Is crime, or dehnquency, the reaction of an 

 individual pecuHar or abnormal in any way to an environ- 

 ment that is either normal or abnormal? The preceding 

 pages contain material essential for consideration before 

 this question is answered. They offer fundamental criticisms 

 of the data and conclusions that have been published under 

 the title of criminology. It is hardly necessary to recapitulate 

 the several points; such as the fact that only caught offenders 

 are studied; that what is designated as crime does not 

 differ in any respect from much other antisocial conduct; 



