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Testimony of Dr. Gunnar Dybwad, Executive Director National Association for Retarded Children, Inc.

Before the New Jersey Youth Study Commission, Trenton, New Jersey February 13, 1958

Madame Chairman; Members of the Commission:

I wish to thank you for the opportunity of appearing before you on behalf of the National Association for Retarded Children. We always take pleasure in cooperating with state governmental agencies and commissions, but we are particularly glad to participate in your investigation of mental retardation and delinquency. This is a subject that has been ignored too long. During the past ten years when mental retardation has become the subject of inquiry by many disciplines, its relationship to delinquency received but little attention.

Because I feel that this observation is of significance to your work and might influence the course of your investigation, let me document it briefly. In 1930, Dr. Stanley Powell Davies wrote one of the standard texts in the field of mental retardation entitled "Social Control of the Mentally Deficient". This month, Dr. Davies, now General Secretary of the Community Service Society of New York City, completed a revision of this original text, written in collaboration with Miss Katherine Ecob, a well-known expert in the field of mental retardation. When I asked Dr. Davies if he had been able to record considerable progress pertaining to the defective delinquent he said that it had been most astonishing to him how little had transpired during the intervening 28 years in this special area of mental deficiency. He added: "I described the Napanoch (New York) institution and its training plan in the first edition of my book and this still seems to be in the forefront."

Equally as striking as Dr. Davies' comment is the fact that the librarian of the National Probation and Parole Association, the most distinguished national organization in the field of crime and delinquency, could not direct me to a single article in either their Journal or any of their Year Books that dealt with the subject of the defective or mentally retarded delinquent.

I have dwelt on this lack of activity at length because it is well to remember that much of the testimony you will hear on this subject, including my own, is based on observations and impressions rather than on rigorous, exacting research and comprehensive statistical study. It is my sincere hope that out of the hearings you are now holding and out of your subsequent explorations and deliberations, there will come an emphatic demand for needed research efforts and demonstration projects in addition to the ameliorating administrative and legislative measures that will be urged upon you.

Your Commission asks, "What is the relationship between mental retardation and delinquent behavior in children and youth?" A good deal of misinformation is bandied about by the general public as well as by seemingly well-informed writers and lecturers to the effect that mental deficiency or mental retardation (and I shall use here these words interchangeably) are a major cause of criminality and delinquency. It is further implied that this refers to major criminality and delinquency.

This subject is so entangled in confusion that it would take far more time than is available at this hearing to analyze it thoroughly. Let me merely point up a few highlights: Much time has been wasted in the past to differentiate between defective delinquents and delinquent defectives, in an attempt to allocate administrative responsibility. I shall proceed on the assumption that we are concerned with individuals whose basic impairment is mental deficiency and whose degree of retardation precludes complete independence and self-management in society in spite of special education and training. Too often individuals have been classed as defective delinquents merely on the basis of poor academic performance and often even, as one recent author (1) has pointed out, on the basis of faulty, hurried testing.

Confusion is engendered by a misconception which holds that the more severely retarded individual has a greater susceptibility to delinquency. In considering the relationship of drug addiction to crime, it is readily assumed that the more serious the drug addiction the more serious is the criminal potential. This analogy is definitely not the case in mental retardation. The severity of the handicap, to the contrary, acts as a roadblock to delinquent activity. It is in the upper ranges of mental retardation that we find delinquent activities.

Next, efforts to establish an easily recognized "type" of defective delinquent have not been successful. (2)

I am appending to my remarks quotations from seven authors (3) who are in substantial agreement that earlier statements regarding the high incidence of criminal activity among retarded individuals as a total group do not stand up under scrutiny. This does not imply that defective delinquents do not pose a considerable problem. Even if not as large in numbers as once had been believed, they still pose very vexing problems in both prevention and treatment.