resents itself is: "Where shall we put the incorrigible
criminal?" If we agree that he owes his criminality to causes over which
he has no control and that the crime here is the outgrowth of a
degenerative personality, a personality which is distinctly abnormal,
it would seem that he belongs in a hospital rather than a penal
institution, but is this unequivocally so? It is unquestionably true
that these individuals are abnormal, that without actually being insane
they evidence from their earliest childhood a more or less distinct
deviation from the normal; they may therefore be considered as
"border-line cases," _i.e._, cases which deviate from normal man and
incline toward the insane through numerous gradations. As soon, however,
as their abnormality manifests itself in distinct incorrigible
antisocial tendencies, the right of society to protect itself from such
an element must be considered. When free from actual psychotic
manifestations (which very easily engraft themselves upon this
degenerative soil) these individuals do not belong in a hospital for the
insane. Here they serve only as a very troublesome and disturbing
element, and wield an undesirable influence over many easily
impressionable insane patients. They do not belong in a general penal
institution because of the very deleterious influence they exert on the
accidental but uncorrupted convict with whom they come in close contact
in these institutions. It is my opinion that these individuals, forming
as they do a distinct species of humanity, should be segregated into
colonies especially designed for them, where under proper medical
supervision, they should be made to earn their subsistence by means of
some useful occupation. It is very obvious that an indeterminate
sentence is the only rational way of approach to this problem and this
should be supplemented by the vesting of the parole power in the hands
of a board composed, not exclusively of members of the legal profession,
but largely of physicians, and particularly those trained in
psychopathology.

The foregoing cases, while distinctly abnormal mentally, owe their
recidivism to a qualitative rather than a quantitative defect.

Since the original publication of this paper, I have had occasion to
observe a number of recidivists in whom the defect was essentially a
quantitative one, _i.e._, patients ranging in intelligence all the way
from idiocy to moronism.

The following case is a good illustration