Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 6.djvu/334

320 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY 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