Institutions for Defective Delinquents

This new identification of a class of (broadly described) mentally deficient criminals, already imprisoned by state and local governments, caused a conversation about what sort of institution they could best belong in: Superintendents of the feebleminded now argued that delinquent and disruptive defectives should be removed to more secure, prisonlike quarters.

Nonetheless, a spokesperson for the Massachusetts Board of Insanity pointed out, defective delinquents should definitely not be sent to hospitals for the mentally ill, for they tend to escape and commit sex offenses and arson.

"[6] Patient-convicts in IDDs each had an extensive profile consisting of genealogy, various results from tests measuring levels of cognition, and descriptions of mental illnesses like alcoholism or schizophrenia that eugenicists associated with an inferior gene pool.

Many phenomenon psychologists have said that these populations were over-represented at IDDs because of the Great Migration, as "many of the Negroes born in the rural south become restless, drift northward and get into trouble in the metropolitan areas where the demands of the community are so much more exacting than those of the districts from which they come.

[7] Thus, in the early days of the eugenics movement, prison was intended to be filled only with offenders who could undergo rehabilitation, while alternate 'mental' institutions provided the necessary segregation to control and prevent the procreation of 'degenerate' racial types.

[8] As World War II came to a close in 1945 the eugenics movement, which was founded on the idea that the improvement of human genetic traits would result in a more desirable population, quickly lost legitimacy in the scientific community.

However, it was important to note that prior to the end of the war, eugenics proved to be a major factor in motivating other (seemingly unconnected) reforms in health, welfare, housing, education, or penology.

[7] The changing political climate, however, rendered these methods archaic and eugenics gained popularity because it provided the ideological structure necessary to give scientific substance to traditional prejudices.