# The American Journal of Sociology/Volume 06/Number 3/Prison Laboratories

​PRISON LABORATORIES.
AT the meeting of the National Prison Association of 1899 a committee was appointed to consider and recommend a plan for the study of prisoners. This committee reported at the recent meeting of the association, and its argument and con- clusions are here printed :
The subject of inquiry set for your committee was this : Is it wise to recommend the experimental establishment of laboratories in a limited num- ber of prisons and reformatories for the study of the physical, psychical, and social facts of criminal nature and life ; such laboratories to be directed by specially trained investigators and under control of wardens or superin- tendents ?
We may cite experiments already made in this direction which throw light on the subject, e. g., the Bertillon measurements. These are physical, and for an immediate practical purpose the identification of adult convicts. They are auxiliary to the detective machinery of police. The measurements are not usually taken by men of scientific training, and yet some of the records have considerable value to the student of the phenomena of crime. It is pos- sible that, with additional assistance and direction, this system might be extended and rendered still more accurate and valuable. Care must be taken, however, not to load down the system and burden busy police with complicated and delicate measurements. The immediate practical object must be kept at all cost in strict control.
In some of our prisons and reformatories physical measurements are already taken for the practical purpose of directing the selection of suitable gymnastic exercises for the cure of defects and diseases, for the development of the body, and for the choice of the kind of employment. All agree that such measurements, even if without instruments of precision, have great value in reformatories for youth and undeveloped young men. The records are coming to have some scientific value also for the criminologist. It would not be difficult to extend these measurements and make them still more accurate and complete ; and the plan we shall propose will include all that is valuable in the present physical tests.
With or without such measurements the superintendents and wardens make shrewd observations on the physical and mental strength, character- istics, and tendencies of prisoners. In some cases these impressions and judgments are systematically recorded and become the basis for valuable statistics. The direct observations of physicians and other officers are sup- plemented by police and court records, and by information secured through ​correspondence. Have we not here a fair beginning of a kind of study which trained persons might extend and make more useful? Science is common sense armed with the best tools, instruments, and methods. Every day knowledge, picked up in fragments by hard experience, becomes science by becoming more accurate, thorough, and complete; by tracing out all relations, causes, effects, laws, tendencies. The fact that all our successful wardens and managers have long since worked intelligently in this direction is good evidence that the time is ripe for further improvements.
The studies of children in schools and families shed light on the theme of this investigation. Some of these studies are conducted by physicians for hygienic reasons; as examination of teeth, eyes, ears, skin, etc. Sometimes these examinations are made by physicians, teachers, and psychologists for pedagogic purposes. They demonstrate the importance of knowing the capacity of the person who is to be taught, disciplined, and influenced.
The officials in charge of the present census are making arrangements for certain studies in this direction for statistical uses. The eminent character and knowledge of Dr. F. H. Wines is guarantee for the high value of the methods and results of this investigation, and it deserves all encouragement. But, useful as this temporary effort will be, it cannot take the place of a permanent laboratory established in each institution, and following out life-histories year after year with patient study and minute research.
The students of criminal anthropology and criminal sociology in various countries have already studied quite carefully many thousands of convicts. ​But in the United States we have the greatest variety of race types, all of them affected by the peculiar conditions of American industry, climate, and political institutions. The data furnished from Europe cannot apply in all respects under the entirely different conditions of our country. We must make our own investigations with our own material.
What is proposed? We recommend a laboratory, furnished with the best modern instruments of precision, conducted by a specialist or trained observer, for the scientific study of prison populations, with special reference to obvious practical needs of the administration in the discipline, instruction, and training of prisoners. These studies would be: Physical: the anatomy and physiology of prisoners; measurements of sensation and other manifestations of mind through the body; and the hereditary factors. Psychical: the mental, emotional, voluntary life-activities; the tastes, ideas, knowledge, motives. Social: the domestic, industrial, neighborhood, legal, political, and religious environment which have influenced the character and conduct. We know that all these factors enter into every life and help to shape it, and that no one of them taken alone is sufficient for an explanation.
Conclusions: This kind of investigation is entirely practicable, from whatever point of view we regard it. Competent investigators can be found or trained. The cost is moderate. In many instances the board of managers of institutions can make the appointment out of funds already under their control for educational work. It is useful for discipline; for the direction of aid to discharged prisoners; for the enlightenment of legislatures, courts, and authorities in criminal law and procedure. It promises to make important contributions to the various sciences of human life: to anatomy, physiology, anthropology, psychology, sociology. The prisons would thus be brought into contact with the great life of universities, and would contribute to the best forms of intellectual wealth. This would not be at the cost of pain, and would assist millions of convicts throughout the world. For the achievements of experimental science, built on real exploration rather than on mere speculation, are the possessions of mankind, and are not confined to a class or a country.
If this recommendation meets with the favor of this influential association, it may be proper to agree upon suitable means for carrying it into effect.
​It would be in order to secure the widest possible publication of such information as would prepare the public mind for advance movements here started.
Our representatives in each state could devise their own methods of securing the introduction of the plan into the institutions with which they are identified.
Your committee offers with this outline of recommendations several documents and references, which are at the disposal of this association, and which may serve to confirm and to illustrate the positions here reached.
Respectfully submitted,
Z. R. BROCKWAY,
R. W. McCLAUGHRY,
C. R. HENDERSON, Chairman,
Committee.
This report was heartily and unanimously adopted by the association, and was discussed by the wardens in a special session. The same committee was continued for another year to prosecute the inquiry and promote the establishment of laboratories. In response to a request from the wardens, some further materials are herewith added to the brief outline which served as a basis for the discussion.
The formulation of investigations must be left to the experts who will be appointed directors of laboratories in prisons; but some further illustrations may be presented here in order to make more clear the scope of the purpose of the report. The causes of crime lie in the nature of the offender and in his environment. Methods of reformation and of prevention, to be successful, must be based on knowledge of these causes. The inquiry will be directed to a study of all these elements, physical, psychical, and social.
Examples of physical measurements are such as the following: height, weight, peculiarities of the head, of the palate, teeth, lips, ears, tonsils, face, spinal column. In respect to movements, it is possible to measure speed, lung capacity and action, strength of grip, legs, back, and chest. Physiological defects are discovered and measured, as corrugation of face, inco-ordination of eyes, twitching, pallor, mouth-breathing. All of these throw light on the physical basis of mental life, the power to work, the requirements of training, diet, and exercise. A ​detailed study pf the senses may be made, as of sight, hearing, touch, muscle sense, smell, taste, pain. Still further indications of abnormal conditions are found in the manifestations of disordered perception, attention, feeling, will, and mental activity in making associations, comparisons, and in reasoning. Studies of juvenile offenders in Europe and America have already established the fact that they are, on the average, much inferior in height, weight, muscular strength, and vital capacity to the average of children of the industrial classes who are their neighbors. The social influences cannot be so exactly measured, but they are often most important. For juvenile offenders it is not difficult to discover defects in home environment, hygienic conditions, aesthetic and moral influences, companions, work, and play. In most cases the student can discover and record the facts of nationality, education, religion, moral instruction and ideas, parental influences, occupation, temptations, amusements and games, habits, superstitions, conjugal relations. The correspondence and travel necessary to collect data of this class from police, courts, teachers, pastors, employers, and others, can be done only by persons who reside permanently at a prison. The importance of having established laboratories is very clear. Miss F. A. Kellor, having had considerable experience with such studies in prisons north and south, says:
In order to secure data, there should be permanent and suitable laboratories in each institution, with a well-trained person in charge. Temporary laboratories with portable supplies have been used, but are unsatisfactory for the following reasons: (1) Delicate instruments are required which are not easily transported. (2) Satisfactory rooms, free from noise and disturbance, are not always obtainable for temporary use.(3) A stranger coming into an institution frightens, confuses, and misleads the inmates, who are not then in a normal state. A permanent laboratory would be an adjunct of the institution, and would be accepted as a matter of course. The psychologist should be resident in the institution, and be familiar with the prison population. (4) The transient psychologist secures his subjects through request. It should ​PRISON LABORA TORIES 3 2 1
be a natural part of institution regime, as natural a requirement as a bath or a change of clothes upon arrival. Suspicion and superstition are thus averted. (5) Sometimes tests need to be repeated under different conditions, and this requires longer residence.
Naturally and properly the administrative officers of prisons will ask where competent directors of such institutions can be found. It is vital to the permanent success of this movement that the first appointees be in all respects suitable. The techni- cal qualifications are a training in laboratories of anthropology and of physiological psychology, with a certain additional expe- rience in studies of normal and defective persons in a wider range. The director must be able to formulate and apply sched- ules of questions which will bring out the social forces which tend toward crime. From the standpoint of the sociologist, this is the most interesting part of the investigation. Having sub- mitted this conservative suggestion to an eminent authority 1 in physiology, the author is directly authorized by him to make an even stronger statement than, as a student of sociology, he would venture to make in a field where he is a layman. This state- ment is to the effect that the inherited physiological and psychical traits are of minor, even of insignificant, importance, as causes of crime, save in the rare and exceptional cases of depleting disease or insanity ; that defective social conditions, economic, industrial, domestic, and educational, are the supreme maleficent forces ; that it is even positively misleading and harmful to dwell much, if at all, on bodily and mental traits, because we thus divert public attention away from social reforms and amelio- ration which are within human power to control, and which alone are capable of preventing a criminal career.
But even if these physical and psychical records prove to be unimportant in the explanation of causes of crime, their practical value as means of identification, as guides in physical training and making of dietaries, and as helps in the selection of suitable methods of training, would remain. Certainly the dif- ference in crime due to sex is chiefly due to biological and not
1 These points are illustrated and confirmed in a forthcoming work of PROFESSOR JACQUES LOEB, Comparative Physiology of the Brain and Comparative Psychology. ​322 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY
social causes, as Morrison has pointed out in his work on Juve- nile Offenders; and we are not justified in utterly ignoring other individual physical conditions in the present stage of investiga- tion.
This protest of a physiologist must, however, serve to make all the more clear and emphatic a belief expressed in the report, that the director of the laboratory must give special attention to a study of the social surroundings and influences which have led to crime. If this be an important, perhaps the only important, subject of investigation, it follows that the director must have training in sociology and economics as well as in physiological psychology. For the tyro in these subjects is no more compe- tent to analyze the complex social forces than the quack is competent to diagnose disease as a necessary preliminary to treatment by medicine, surgery, or regimen. The phenomena of social life are more obvious and accessible than those of physical life, but they are far more vast, entangled, and compli- cated. It is hardly probable that any one person can be found who will be equally equipped in all three fields of research, and the results of various directors will necessarily have unequal value.
The prison physician in some cases might be able to spend six months in a university laboratory and be able, with his pre- vious knowledge of anatomy and physiology, to use the instru- ments and interpret the results. Advanced students who have been thoroughly trained by modern methods in psychology would find a new and enticing field in an institution whose inmates are under the control of the authorities, and become communicative if they are approached in a sympathetic and tactful way. The number of competent observers would be small at first, but the hope of employment and the opportunity of discovery would soon attract a supply of psychologists.
Both to prison authorities and to candidates for positions the question of salary must be raised. Prisons are public insti- tutions, and unmarried officers are frequently boarded in the establishment. The salary of a young observer might begin at nine hundred dollars, and be increased with experience and ​PRISON LA BORA TORIES 323
evidence of success to two thousand dollars or more. A common- wealth could employ an able director for all its prisons and reformatories, and supply assistants for detailed work at much lower salaries. While each person must make his own estimate of prospects, it seems probable that we are opening a new pro- fession for well-trained observers, and a new opportunity of advancing science. Such inducements are not without weight with those whose salary is only a means of living, and whose real rewards are in culture, fame, or philanthropy.
The cost of equipment is not very great. The experts think that five hundred dollars would furnish the most necessary instruments, although additions must be made from time to time, as new inventions come into use. 1
It is the desire of the committee of the National Prison Association to cooperate with the departments of psychology and anthropology in universities, and with such bodies as the American scientific associations, and to promote, as far as pos- sible, uniformity in the methods of taking measurements and recording observations. This is highly important in comparison of data and results. It would be natural and easy for all prison directors to agree in advance upon a common system of pro- cedure, in order to give generalizations a higher value.
C. R. HENDERSON. THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO.
"DR. A. MACDONALD has furnished a full description, with ample illustrations, of the most important psycho-physical and anthropometrical instruments of precision, and has printed a list of reliable makers, in the Report of the United States Com- missioner of Education, 1897-8, Vol. I, pp. 1141-1204. He has also illustrated their use in the study of children in the same connection. Compare his earlier studies, " Education and Pathosocial Studies," in the Report of the Commissioner of Educa- tion, 1889-90 and 1893-4.
* ↑ Mr. Z. R. Brockway, in a recent letter, expresses this judgment: "There is not much knowledge about the criminal except the superficial and incidental knowledge of criminals had by individual legislators, courts, and court officers, who come in casual contact with criminals. The comprehensive study of the criminal class in society is of great importance, and should be initiated and carried on by the system under state direction. I am more and more impressed, having personally observed some fifty thousand prisoners, that the prison class is a class of inhabitants different, as a class, from others who do not fall into crime. One who should travel throughout the world visiting prisons of different nations and the prisoners therein would be impressed, if an intelligent observer, with the similarity of general appearance of prison populations. The distinguishing characteristics of criminals which, when observed in mass, give such a positive impression, ought to be inquired into, mapped out, and published for the information of the lawmakers and those who administer laws."
* ↑ See Francis Warner, The Study of Children and Their School Training, The Macmillan Co., 1899.
* ↑ Dr. Jules Morel contributed a valuable paper to the National Prison Association in 1896, Proceedings, pp. 279-81. A schedule of examinations of convicts is there given. G. E. Dawson offers a "Study of Youthful Degeneracy" in the Report of the U. S. Commissioner of Education, 1897-8, Vol. I, p. 1321. The board of education of Chicago has established a bureau for child study, and the reports of this bureau are of great interest in this connection. Miss F. A. Kellor, in the American Journal of Sociology, January and March, 1900, gave the results of studies of criminal women. Professor F. Starr gave an account of Dr. Boca's interesting laboratory at Puebla, Mexico, in the American Journal of Sociology, July, 1897.
* ↑ Dr. Christopher, of the Chicago board of education, deserves great credit for promoting studies of children in the schools. One of the officers, Mr. Victor Campbell, has kindly shown me, in advance of publication, some results of this investigation of 282 juvenile delinquents in the John Worthy School. The results of recent measurements agree with those obtained by other observers.