Johnson, Arthur C. Jr.

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Northwestern University Illinois, School of Law: Scholarly Commons

Journal of Criminal Law and CriminologyVolume 33 | Issue 4 Article 51943Our Schools Make CriminalsArthur C. Jr. JohnsonFollow this and additional works at: https://scholarlycommons.law.northwestern.edu/jclcPart of the Criminal Law Commons, Criminology Commons, and the Criminology and CriminalJustice CommonsThis Article is brought to you for free and open access by Northwestern University School of Law Scholarly Commons. It has been accepted forinclusion in Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology by an authorized editor of Northwestern University School of Law Scholarly Commons.Recommended CitationArthur C. Jr. Johnson, Our Schools Make Criminals, 33 J. Crim. L. & Criminology 310 (1942-1943)OUR SCHOOLS MAKE CRIMINALSArthur C. Iohnson, Jr.'For several years I have suspected that our schools conditionsome criminals-that for many school-age children, present educa-tional practices backfire in their social intent. But I couldn't putmy finger on the how and why of it until I visited a children's courtrecently.There I saw a little tike start out along a road which had begunin his school classroom and which probably will end at a prison gate.I know., for after twenty years equally divided between public andprison educational work, I know both ends of that road.The youngster made a brave pretense at toughness--apparentlythe only test of manhood he knew-but behind the attempt was justa frightened boy. I have seen this same reaction in youthful of-*fenders too often to be fooled by it."Your Honor," a court investigator testified, "I know this casewell. John's teacher and the principal of his school agree that heis a confirmed truant and trouble-maker, who refuses to respondto proper influence and treatment."I have read hundreds of juvenile case histories without realizingthat a second-hand opinion may become prosecutor and jury forwhat in effect constitutes'a criminal trial. There could be no defense-John was a truant, and he certainly appeared to be a trouble-maker.The judge sealed the fate of the sullen lad. "John Doe, Jr., onthe evidence, this court has no alternative but to declare you adelinquent under the law, and commit you to (institution named)until such time as the authorities there are convinced that yourattitude and conduct have changed. That is all."Consistent in his role of tough guy, the kid glared at the judgeand snarled, "A'right, send me away an' see if I care! I'll show 'emI c'n take it."What a perfect start for a criminal career!On the objective evidence, no one could take exception to thecourt's finding-it was too late for compromise in this case. Butexperience told me that, taken in time, John could have been saved.In some such manner 18,000 youths a year are herded into insti-tutions for corrective treatment-over one-half committed ashabitual truants from school and incorrigibles. Many times thatnumber are placed on probation-for the -courts do compromise,whenever possible. Why do so many boys run away from school?'Educational Supervisor in the State Prison, Attica, N. Y.310SCHOOLS MAKE CRIMINALS 311Negative School InfluencesPersonal contact with over 7,000 prisoners made me ponder theinvestigator's statement: ".... refuses to respond to proper influenceand treatment." To what "influence and treatment" had John beensubjected in school? What constitutes "proper" influence and treat-ment for John? We can answer rather definitely for an averagechild, but John was not an average child or he wouldn't have beenin court. Had his teacher and principal actually tried to supplyproper ififluence and treatment-had they worked with John tohelp him-or was he merely the nuisance-discard from a class andschool? That these are valid questions is shown by actual statementsby other Johns:(1) "The teacher tried to make me wear better clothes like the other children. Ifinally told her to go to hell and walked out. I swore then that I would havebetter clothes if I had to steal them and I did."(2) " I had a stutter. I was put in a class with a lot -of screwballs. My pals kiddedme and I quit"(8) "My mother was going nuts and I was worried about her. One day the teachercalled me crazy too. I never went to school regular after that."(4) "I was fired from school because I wouldn't study my history. When theybrought me back and tried to make me study history again, I started to skipschooL"(5) "I just couldn't recite in class. The teacher nagged at me and to avoid troubleI left school."(6) "I don't know why I ran away from school. I couldn't get along in a crowd,that's all."(7) "I was put in a class with a lot of dumb clucks. It was too much for me andI qu t"(8) ."One day I got to school late and was told that if I couldn't get there on time,not to come at all, just to spoil the class record. I took them at their word."Equally obvious end-products of illy considered school "influ-ences" are to be found in any prison. If these boys had been handledsympathetically and understandingly at the right time, manywould not, today, be where they are.In the past, I always accepted the occasional trouble-maker asan inescapable headache for the school. I now know that the schoolwas frequently an even greater headache for that child. For as Ibetter understand the attitudes which underlie antisocial behavior,I see that they often hinge on little things for which the school alonewas at fault.It is so easy to dodge embarrassing issues by treating the prob-lem boy as a discipline case, waiving all personal responsibility byturning him over to the social worker and the courts. These aretoo often so concerned with opinions of other and untrained ob-servers that-they have neither time nor opportunity to study theboy, his personal problems, the real causes for his sorry plight.312 ARTHUR C. JOHNSON, JR.Altogether too many youngsters are being judged bad and, in theiryouth and pliability, in fact are being made bad.The juvenile institution is, in the main, a tardy answer to Amer-ica's dilemma of delinquency--side-stepping the real isgue, extrav-agant in-taxpayer dollars, and utterly wasteful in ultimate humanvalues. We must counterbalance the effect of delinquent influenceswhile the child is most susceptible to them, not create themourselves.Result of the School's 'FailureThat it is a school problem is clear. Ina group of 634 consecu-tive pri son commitments, 258 were recidivists of whom 194, or 78per cent, had truancy as the first entry in their crime ledger. Of the376 first offenders, 231, or 61" per cent, got the-same start. On their.ow&n admission, 140,. or 67 per cent of the remainder, had been off-the-record truants. This is a serious indictment of our schools..,It is.a present problem. Of these 565 truants, 67 were undernineteen; 182 were between nineteen and twenty-one; and 197"between twpenty-one and twenty-seven years old when lastcommitted.It ha been said that of every one hundred boys of school age,eighty arpr-aveizage, healthy, normal youngsters. Being slow men-tally, ten-:have to be "pushed." Highstrung and rebellious againstrestraint, ,he 'emaining ten become behavior problems and "mustbe sat on." It is with this ten per cent that the school fails.Hark back to our own schooldays for a picture of the boy who-must be "sat on." 'There was a Johnl in our class. For any of manyreasons, this boy was made to feel alien-a misfit in the group. Hegot less consideration than we. Sooner or later, he accepted ourattitude as a challenge and reacted accordingly.Reaction followed one of two characteristic patterns: either theboy started an indiscriminate bedevilment of teacher and pupilsalike; or abandoning the social approach, he. became moody andsullen, subject to violent outbursts of temper on the slightest prov-ocation. Either attitude required ever increasing effort.to maintainitself.Failing to reach goals gratifying to his bruised ego, John even-tually ran away from what he realized had become an untenableposition.' And with him into truancy went the rankling acknowledg-ment of personal defeat-to be compensated for at any cost..In this sequence of attitudes and conflicts lies the germ for afixed manner of behavior-abandonment of the conventional selfand the adoption of a reputational personality. The expression, "Imay I as well have the game as the name," sums up the whole dis-torted outlook. Continued, it may lead to delinquency and crime.Left to his own resources, John will grow up conditioned to aSCHOOLS MAKE CRIMINALS 313'tempo of excitement and social insecurity, antagonistic to thehumdrum, nomadic, agitative-a mentally maladjusted individualistfor whom the term psychopathic personality applies. In everydaylanguage the psychopath is a bundle of nerves; emotionally unstd-ble, impulsive, self-centered, non-cooperative, hence socially embar-rassing. He is intelligent, but he rarely uses his intelligence to hisown ultimate best interest and frequently employs it to antisocialends. Thirty per cent of present prison populations possess theseabnormal personality traits.One prisoner-always in trouble, even in prison, told me: "I be-lieve in all or nothing. When held down, my mind is never at peace.The reaction is dissatisfaction with my lot and a desire to wreckwhatever barrier suppresses my will." Disgruntled with the worldabout him, he would wreck it-but he succeeds only in wreckinghimself. This is a characteristic psychopathic reaction.No one can say with certainty what underlies the condition. Itappears to result from external maladjustments "exploding" toform internal conflicts or neuroses which often baffle the combinedknowledge of all the sciences. It appears, at least partially, a by-product of the age in which we live--one dedicated to speeds whichin a generation have stepped man from the horse and buggy intothe stratoplane. One father aptly expressed it in the statement: "Iput my son on a merry-go-round and forgot to take him off."Unless we master the speeds we are creating, they must destroyour children. This is our basic social problem.Of 196 instances of prison adjustment and discipline, 92 weredefinitely psychopathic and 63 showed closely related conditions.We may assume that 155, or 79 per cent of the group were from thatten per cent of boys who "must be sat on."The Job AheadThe potential trouble-maker forms but a small yet constantgroup in the school population. With native intelligence, instinctivecleverness, personal courage; he is tense under the lashing ofemotional stress, perpetual restlessness, easily aroused antago-nism-an unnatural blending of positive and negative charactertraits readily discernible to the observant.In our prisons, penitentiaries, jails, and juvenile institutionsare thousands of these boys-now adult social outcasts. In ourschools and yet to enter school are other thousands, boys as theyonce were, doomed to travel the same road to the same end, unlessthe school of tomorrow does .something for them which, today, it isnot doing. We can't lump the intelligent but unstable John with "abunch of screwballs" and "dumb clucks," and expect to cure all bythe same process.Very little attempt is being made by the school to correct the314 .ARTHUR C. JOHNSON, JR.existing situation. Only a handful of American communities haveplanned crime prevention programs originating there. The schoolis the one agency contacting all children in the traditional settingand natural manner essential in such a program. From his firstday at school, the overly restless and emotional child must beidentified and quieted, before his character is set and he becomes amis-behavior problem-antagonisms developed, rebellions estab-lished, emotional barriers erected-a case for correction not preven-tion.Dropped in their laps by the times, schoolmen have a vitalsituation confronting them. They must not approach it by assum-ing that techniques of demonstrated value to the normal boy willcorrect deficiencies in John. And John must not be made a scapegoatto rationalize their failure. We" need a neW approach to a newproblem having aspects in common with experience.Prevention involves occupational therapies peculiar to eachboy. The effect of causes behind abnormal behavior must be neu-tralized by activities of individual interest and occupational worth.Education, as such, must beso organized and motivated as toappear but-the integral part of a desirable whole. The larger purposemust be met whether one single other thing, nbw deemed educational-ly essential, is accomplished or not. With so much at stake, wecan't afford to quibble over ways and means for doing.Trade Training Not EnoughHistorically, trade schools developed with one eye on theacademic misfit. Many still functi6n primarily as first aid in thecure of the delinquent. Vocational training has a very real placein the education of a run-of-the-mine boy. It would seem to betwice as valuable for our John. But prison "experience demonstratesthat a skilled trade--circumscribed with personal repressions andoccupational restrictions as it is-may pyramid mental and socialunrest in the emotionally unstable. Here is the training-condition-ing underlying a flat refusal to do maintenance work."I guess.I was a trial to my teachers. Finally the principal had me transferred tothe vocational school. .1 was put in the carpentry class,.but I didn't-like it* and gotout by the simple method of refusing to -work. I did the same in the print shop.When I found the plumbing shop just as bad, I ran away and have been on the looseever since. That kind of work tied me down too much."Vocational educators confuse the creation of. desirable habitsof work with trade training, on the false assumption that the onemay be secured only through the other. Too often they fail torealize that the prospective trainee must be guided into employmenton the economic level at which he may adequately maintain him-self, and therein they fail as teachers... The utilization of vocational activities and materials fortherapeutic purposes is niot new. A few schools have developed out-SCHOOLS MAKE CRIMINALSstanding programs based on this concept. Their methods and re-sults have been so publicized that they need not be repeated here.Even the casual visitor will recognize the vitalizing personality ofone man or. woman as being responsible for the success of each.At one such school, I was greeted with;"See what (the principal) lets me do! No one ever let me do things like this before.So what? I'm always in trouble. I ain't any more."At another I heard:"Gee I It's swell here and I'm doing fine. I ran away from home to get out of goingto school-but this ain't no school, mister, get that straight."This hard boiled little egg didn't realize that he was in a school.How different from most juvenile institutions, where escape is amatter of almost daily occurrence!If there is a recipe for effective educational work with boys who"must be sat on," it is contained in those words: "but this ain't noschool, mister, get that straight."We may summarize a crime prevention program: it is one ofsympathetic understanding and guidance-not impersonal andmechanized techniques of the laboratory now so commonly sub-stituted for it. The first step with each boy is to "get under his skin,"not "in his hair." Men and women who can attract boys becominghardened to life and suspicious of motive must be brought intothe work.Our job is to establish emotional control, create habits of humilityin thought consideration in action, responsibility in performance-all attitudes of approach, not necessarily skills for doing. We willsucceed only when we apply the simple formula of individualpersuasion by personal example, and apply it in time.We have streamlined our economics. But the human cycle isconstant-we cannot streamline human conduct or correct faultybehavior by production line methods.Old Problems StreamlinedProblems of delinquency caused, or apparently brought about,by war conditions are not necessarily new problems. Nine out often of them are, upon close scrutiny, found to be old acquaintancesdecked out in streamlined attire. War itself is as old as history andits problems remain, in most respects, basically the same.-E. R. Cass at the N. Y. State Conference for Social Work, Syra-cuse, Nov. 11, 1942.

Our Schools Make Criminals

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Our Schools Make Criminals

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