HOUSE BILLS No. 1. Providing for election and appointment of U. S. Senator in case of vacancy. No. 6. Appropriation for Dairy Department. No. 17. Appropriation for Motor Vehicle deficit. No. 45. Appropriation for balance due C. E. Lounsbury on Highway Commission investigation. No. 50. Appropriation for balance due F. J. Graham on Highway Commission investigation. No. 56. Permitting townships and municipalities to contribute to support of district fair associations. No. 62. Permitting state aid for bridges across state lines of interstate highways or roads across Little Missouri or navigable streams. No. 63. Appropriation for Little Missouri bridge near Challoner's Ferry. No. 124. Provides for purchase or lease of electric light or power plants within or without corporate limits of cities, towns and villages. No. 138. Amends Section 10804 and Section 10805 of Compiled Laws of 1913 relating to challenges to jurors in criminal cases. No. 144. Appropriation for Hospital for Insane. No. 175. Appropriation for Fargo Bridge. No. 176. Appropriation for hospital and burial expenses of Hon. J. W. O'Neil. No. 177. Empowers R. R. Commissioners to require extension of electric transmission lines and service to cities, towns and villages contiguous to territory served, rates, rules and regulations. No. 181. Appropriation for Capitol building and grounds. No. 197. Transfers $25,000 of N. D. A. C. equipment fund to maintenance. No. 208. Provides for lease or sale of islands formed in beds of navigable streams. No. 220. Appropriation for Wahpeton bridge. No. 225. Requires R. R. Commissioners to investigate anl fix rates, etc., for transportation of fuels. No. 251. Providing moratorium on tax certificates or other tax liens acquired by State Treasurer as trustee of State; fixes rates of interest and prohibits transfer of tax certificates or tax liens held by counties on lands foreclosed. No. 261. Provides for arbitration of controversies between Highway Commission and contractors, entry and enforcement of judgment. No. 331. Provides qualifications and method of electing officers of common school districts. No. 334. Provides liability of owners of dogs killing sheep and other domestic animals. No. 341. Establishes tax on gifts, legacies, inheritances, bequests, successions and transfers, repeals Sections 2346b1 - 2346b57 of Supplement to Compiled Laws of 1913. PRESIDENT MCINTYRE ILL It is with extreme regret that we chronicle the continuing illness of President W. A. McIntyre in Washington, D. C., where he went on a business trip about a month ago. Our information concerning his condition is rather meager, but points to an early recovery. 6796 Entered as Second Class Matter Jan. 15, 1925, at the Post- office at Bismarck, North Dakota, Under the Act of August 24, ARE INHERITED MENTAL OR EMOTIONAL DEFECTS THE PRINCIPAL CAUSE OF CRIMINAL DELINQUENCY? GEO. M. MCKENNA* Crime has a tremendous fascination for all of us-it is dramatic or commonplace, vulgar or sordid, brutal or ferocious, incomprehensible or childish, depending largely upon the personnel of the criminal, his method of perpetration, or "modus operandi", the scene and occasion, and the relative standing, individuality, or prominence of the victim. Crime is thoroughly and luridly advertised in newspaper, pamphlet, book, and magazine, and appeals to the potential "Cole Younger" or the incipient "Sherlock Holmes" or the reformer in all of us. It is always present in a greater or less degree, and the consensus of opinion seems to be that an unprecedented "wave" of this noxious social and moral evil has been sweeping over this country particularly, for some ten years past, and a goodly percentage claim that it is now reaching a dangerous crest which threatens the foundations of society and the very fabric of government itself. Available None can deny that it is an important question. statistics indicate that about 500,000 men, women and children enter various correctional and penal institutions each year in the United States, and while estimates of the annual cost of crime vary, they undoubtably reach billions of dollars. Causes are assigned “ad libitum": The war, prohibition, feeble mindedness, emotional insanity, lack of religious faith and practice, divorce, the automobile, movies, dancing, inadequate police protection, loss of parental control, a false and indifferent public opinion, etc., etc. Courts, politicians, reformers, educators, clergymen, the newspaper editor, the people, have become aroused and are eagerly looking for a remedy. What more natural than that the Psychologists, the Pathologists, the Eugenists, the Sociologists, the Juvenile Workers, the Criminologists, the Biologists, and Psychiatrists should fling themselves into the breach, each with a plan of correction, each sure his * Judge of District Court-Third Judicial District, Napoleon, North Dakota. respective theory of cause and prevention is all important, unassailable, and entirely sufficient to stem the crimson tide. What group is, and of necessity should be, more interested in the subject of crime from every possibly phase than the members of the bar? Thousands of our profession make their annual living defending those accused of lesser or more serious breaches of the law. Thousands more are compensated from the public treasury for prosecuting them. Others are interested in securing the release and parole of prisoners, in looking after the property interests of the accused, the condemned, or the victims of their criminality, and we as jurists, attorneys or counsellors are deeply concerned with feeble mindedness, defective affectivity, or insanity as a defense. We have to deal with the expert alienist and psychiatrist upon his own ground. Yet all other professions apparently coincide in accusing us of knowing less about the subject than even the ordinary layman. Charging that we are guilty of antedeluvianism, that we fail utterly to investigate, study, or keep abreast with modern science and medicine, and that our ultra conservatism is the cause, and the main cause, for the inability of those who know how, to initiate a program which will bring about the desired change. Our Courts are accused of sentencing to death men who are wholly irresponsible for crime, through feeblemindedness, emotional insanity, or defects of the emotions such as "dementia praecox katatonia". We are told that heredity is the controlling factor in crime, that if we will purify the bloodstream of the race, sterilize and segregate the criminal, emotionally or mentally defective, establish Psychiatric Clinics so that children may be examined and when found emotionally defective, be placed in farm colonies where they may become industrially useful to society without being permitted to propagate, that we will have throttled crime at its source and in a generation or two will be the most law abiding nation in the world. At the September 1926 Meeting of our Bar Association a distinguished Chicago jurist gave us an interesting paper on the cause and prevention of crime. A careful reading of this lecture will show that the author desired to prove and leave with us the impression, that the majority of modern scientists believe and teach, that with the re-discovery of Mendel's Law of Heredity, and the recent revelation that there is a high correlation between emotional defect and social behavior, that we inherit our criminal tendencies and characteristics. That proper or improper environment, early parental example, good or bad homes, insufficient discipline, education and religion, or lack of them, are practically immaterial. That it is idle in most cases to deal with criminals as though they were normal persons who know the right yet prefer to pursue the wrong. That it is fundamental error to assume that youths charged with crime are normal, and that society can adopt radical measures of reform by which they may be won from idleness, immorality, and selfindulgence, and inspired with ambition to make the most of their opportunities and lead useful and honorable lives. That to suppose that criminality is the result of a bad bringing. up, a poor environment, bad example at home, vicious companionship, or the leading of an unchristian life in general, is unscientific, and contrary to all the modern recognized laws of biology or genetics. Judge Olson in his lecture stated: "Environment will create opportunities and will develop and discipline the character, but it will not alter in the slightest degree the qualities of the mind and heart which are of the blood solely. Lincoln inherited the qualities that made him great. Ever since his death environment has been credited with his success, and his parents, ancestors, and the race from which he sprung have been ignored as factors of supreme importance in his life. But now the science of biology-"the youngest of the sciences"-discloses the secret of his power and proves that he was the product of a great heredity. "The discovery and re-discovery of Mendel's Law of Heredity, the recent knowledge that the emotions govern behaviour more than the intellect, that the chromosomes, those microscopic particles, fortyeight in every human being, half of which are inherited from each parent, carry the different traits which make us what we are, and that environment does not change nor affect these chromosomes in the slightest-all this comparatively recent knowledge-must, and has changed our views of the source of Lincoln's power from being environmental to hereditary. Scientists have long known that the brain was made up of layers, but have only recently come to realize that the brain has more than one function. It was long believed that the brain was our organ of thought, and that was its only function. But now it is known that it also has other functions, one of the most important of which is to will-to control our actions and emotions. "Only recently has it been learned that the seat of the emotions is the lower or basal layers or ganglia of the brain. Therefore we can trust the moral judgments of a democracy more safely than we can trust its offhand rational decisions. Men of very ordinary ability often are the pillars of society, where decency, ethics and moral standards are concerned. The people as a whole will vote right, if they know the facts. To get this knowledge to them is the big task of democratic statesmanship. "On the other hand, men of ability are often found wanting in ethical standards. Where an individual with a sound basal ganglia, or lower brain, sees right from wrong when the division is only a hairline, those individuals who have low emotion cannot see it when the line is as wide as the road. There are grades and shades of defect from a very slight deviation from normal to the outspoken moral defect. The latter, in spite of a good intellect, which enables him to become a leader, has no ethical sense and corrupts our public life wherever he is given important responsibilities. He himself does not realize the situation; he is colorblind so far as ethics are concerned. For that reason those who are ethically sound ought to drive these high-grade intellectual, but morally defective men, from public office and from public leadership. Such men frequently reach comparatively high places in our government, local, state and national, and we can identify them by their crass conduct when tested by ethical standards." May we inquire first of all what percentage of our criminals are mental defectives, that is imbecile or feeble minded or subnormal? Prior to the great war, leading physicians, psychiatrists, and criminologists, such as Dr. H. H. Goddard of the Vineland New Jersey Training School for Feebleminded, Dr. Charles Goring, the English Criminologist, Sir Bryan Donkin, one of the Directors of Convict Prisons in England; and Doctor William Healy of Chicago, 1 Human Destiny in Human Hands, 3 Bar Briefs, 45, 61 (1926). 1a See his Criminal Imbecile, particularly chapter VI (1915). |