Disappearance of Defectives;
Counter-Reaction to Defective Movement;
Declining Defective Admissions

NYS, in the vanguard of progressive social thought, opened the world's first IDD at Napanoch in 1921. Ten years later, a "sister institution" for female defective delinquents opened in Albion, and in 1935 the Department of Correction built another prison for male defectives at Woodboume. These three facilities had a combined capacity of over 2,000 or about one-sixth of the state's entire prison population. Thirty years later, all three IDD programs had ceased operation.

The unproven, but widely held belief that "feeblemindedness," insanity, and criminality were all related and all hereditary led to the creation of the law providing for the indefinite commitment of defective delinquents. But even as the IDD was getting underway, doubt and skepticism were creeping in.

In 1921, the U.S. Army published the results of the testing program applied to over a million men recruited for WWI: 47 percent of the white men, and 89 percent of the blacks, had mental ages of 12 or lower, the cut-off point for defect. Could half the American people be feeble-minded? These findings were so clearly contrary to everyone's everyday experience of his fellow creatures that they cried out for a rethinking of the testing norms and procedures. Over the next two or three decades, testing was improved, and commitments declined. At Napanoch, the concentrated educational effort begun under Superintendent Hanlon and accelerated under Superintendent McKendrick also tended to improve test scores, with the result that higher proportions were released on parole.

At the close of WWI, the Napanoch institution stood nearly empty. Designed to hold 500, its census was under 200 when it was set aside for defectives. Within a year and a half, the census was nearing 400, and by 1926, the population exceeded 600, spilling out of the cells into makeshift donnitories-an arrangement that would continue for the next 40 years. Cots were set up in the hospital, day rooms, officers' rooms, and schoolrooms. Inmates' personal space in the improvised dorms was adjusted to meet requirements . . . A new cellhouse with a capacity of 300 was occupied in 1931. By 1935, Napanoch housed 1,000 men.

Admission of mental defectives steadily climbed for about 20 years after passage of the defective delinquent law. Then, around 1940, admissions began to decline. Napanoch's inmate population did not immediately go down, however, for two reasons.

Admission of mental defectives steadily climbed for about 20 years after passage of the defective delinquent law. Then, around 1940, admissions began to decline. Napanoch's inmate population did not immediately go down, however, for two reasons.

Woodboume, 15 miles southwest of Napanoch, received less severely retarded defectives that were likely to be paroled after a relatively short stay, while Napanoch specialized in the harder cases. So when defective admissions began to plummet, it was Woodboume with an already higher functioning population that first started to accept normal inmates.

The second reason . . . was the indefinite sentence. The law required that defectives be retained until judged capable of supporting themselves in a law-abiding fashion. . .though fewer were being committed, those who were committed would, in fact, be seriously defective and unlikely candidates for parole. And so, while IDD officials after about 1935 were making genuine progress in improving the functioning of the bulk of their inmates, there was accreting a growing group of life-long custodial cases. Not only was this group severely limited in capabilities, it was, of course, aging. By the 1950s, there were several hundred geriatric cases, many of them semi-invalids, who were huddled together in what came to be called the "Invalid Squad." The problem worsened in the mid-1950s when Woodboume completed its transition to "normals" by sending its last, and worst, defectives to Napanoch.

To
NYCHS
Home Page
To Correction
Chronicles
Starter Page
To
NYS DOCS
Home Page