Introduction and Historical Roots
Social theory, public policy, and clinical practice have long been susceptible to manipulation and distortion concerning offenders with intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD). Crime and the issues surrounding crime can be incendiary topics for the media, then the public, and consequently politicians. Fear of crime can lead to the easy manipulation of public perception concerning the culpability of one section of society or another. People with IDD have a long history of being the target of such unwarranted scapegoating.
During the 19th century there were several important influences that came together with such potency that it seems to have taken those involved by surprise. First came the development of the concept of institutions as a solution to educating people with IDD. In 1844 John Conolly, chief physician at the at Hanwell Asylum in London visited two institutions in Paris â the Salpetriere and the BicĂȘtre, opened by Edouard Seguin, a French physician who pioneered educational approaches for children with IDD (Seguin, 1846). Conolly witnessed humane management of âidiots,â education of even the most disabled, and a huge reduction in the use of restraint. His enthusiasm for Seguinâs regime was reflected in his writings (Conolly, 1847), which were circulated throughout Britain and North America. This resulted in widespread enthusiasm for institutional care. One early North American institution for people with IDD was opened in South Boston in 1847 for people âcondemned in hopeless idiocyâ (Trent, 1994). The originators of these establishments were influential and similar institutions opened in New York and Philadelphia. The early institute superintendents wrote of the educative potential of these places and created the concept of idiocy as a social construction while offering an ostensibly humane solution in the form of institutions.
By 1858, however, influential figures were already asserting a link between idiocy and delinquency. Isaac Newton Kerlin, a very important figure in the field of IDD who coined the term âmoral imbecileâ (1858), published a series of 22 case illustrations in which he wrote, of one case:
Here, there is not only the explicit linkage of low intelligence and moral decrepitude, but also an attribution of cunning and culpability â together with an expedient view of capacity â that was to seep into the wider culture and society. These early associations found fertile ground in the latter part of the 19th century following the revelations of Mendelian laws of heredity and Charles Darwinâs writings on evolution and natural selection.
Subsequent institution superintendents were particularly successful in exploiting the supposed links between IDD and criminality to make an argument for the expansion of their services, with medicine rather than education becoming the dominant ethos. Consequently, increasingly persuasive arguments were made for removing people with IDD from society for their own, as well as for societyâs, good. State funding followed, leading to the expansion of many such establishments and the increasing segregation of people with IDD (Scheerenberger, 1983). Institution heads in the US began to be perceived as having unique knowledge of the issues in IDD and they certainly believed that, segregated from wider society, people with IDD could become selfâsufficient in isolated communities. Martin Barr, chief physician of the Pennsylvania Training School for FeebleâMinded Children, said in his 1897 Presidential address to the Association of Medical Officers of American Institutions for Idiotic and FeebleâMinded Persons that âthe imbecile, separated from the world and forbidden to marry, shall become a selfâsupporting, selfârespecting citizenâ (Barr, 1897, p. 3), while Mary Dunphy (1908), superintendent of Childrenâs Institutions, Randallâs Island in New York city, wrote that âit is in the interests of the public as well as for their own sakes, that [people with IDD] be prevented from coming in to contact with those of normal minds.â As others had done, Dunphy put her protective remarks in a threatening context, saying âmoral instincts are almost always lacking in the mentally deficient so even in ordinary intercourseâŠthey are a menace to the welfare of societyâ (p. 334). The reader may experience no small sense of schadenfreude on learning that after surviving a series of scandals Mrs Dunphy was dismissed as superintendent of the New York City Children's Hospital and Schools and publicly disgraced by the New York City State Board of Charities in 1915.
Up until the middle of the 19th century, people with IDD were generally considered a burden on, rather than a menace to society. Scheerenberger (1983) wrote that during the 18th and 19th centuries, living conditions were harsh and unremitting for people with IDD especially in urban areas with growing industrialization. In rural areas, they tended to work long hours in poverty but in industrial settings were unable to maintain employment or be accepted into apprenticeships. As mentioned, the impetus for change was Darwinâs theory of evolution and the establishment of Mendelian laws of heredity which Galton (1869) employed to argue for the role of genetics in individual greatness in his book Hereditary Genius. Others, notably Goddard (1912), applied the same methods of dynastic study to IDD, with devastating effect.
In fact, these authors were part of a general movement sympathetic to eugenics which increasingly regarded IDD as a menace. Scheerenberger (1983) notes that:
In 1889, Kerlin developed his theories on the association between IDD and crime and argued that crime, rather than being the work of the devil, was the result of an individualâs inability to understand moral sense and also their physical infirmity, both of which were nonremediable and inherited (Kerlin & Broomall, 1889). Others also linked IDD to a range of social vices including drunkenness, delinquency, prostitution, and crime. Barr (reported by Trent, 1994) stated:
For Barr, the solution was to increase the number and capacity of the institutions for the protection of both the person with IDD and the public. Here we see both the insinuation of moral deficiency and, importantly, the underpinning and validation from âscienceâ which is an early indication that scientists (many of us writing and reading chapters in this book) can follow and amplify, through their perceived dispassionate legitimacy, the prevailing culture of the day. In this passage from Barr there is also mention of another pernicious insinuation, that those with IDD are particularly fecund and will, therefore, increase significantly in numbers and the threat they pose to moral rectitude.
Goddard (1910) developed this trope using arguments on Mendelian laws of heredity and the innovation of mental testing. Interlinking these developments he introduced the term âfeebleâmindednessâ to include all forms of cognitive impairment and intellectual disability. Those with the mental age of two years or less were termed âidiotsâ; those with a mental age of three to seven years wer...
