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This little book with its many tables represents the summary of a long continued study by Tulchin and his colleagues. In the opinion of reviewer, this contribution should close the chapter on the subject since the previous findings of Herman Adler, Murchison, Root and Doll are pretty well confirmed and any further research would seem unnecessary.
The main conclusion is that there is very little difference between the intelligence levels of inmates in the penitentiaries and reformatories of Illinois and the male population that was examined by intelligence tests in that State during the first World War draft. Since it has been so frequently alleged that criminals, by and large, are individuals of inferior intelligence, the results of these careful examinations of more than ten thousand inmates are exceedingly noteworthy. Tulchin seems to have demonstrated conclusively that criminologists must look to other factors than low intelligence for an explanation of crime.
In his thinking on the subject the reviewer has always been impressed by the uncontested fact that in institutions for juvenile delinquents the proportion of the mentally defective is far higher than in the general population. Why not then in the institutions for adult offenders? Can it be that the mentally defective are more apt to benefit by correctional school training, either educationally or by the punitive aspects of such commitment? Of course we know that some defectives do become habitual criminals, but on the whole they seem to be as reformable if not more so than those of higher intelligence.
Some of the details of the findings have special interest. For example, over eleven per cent of the inmates in the penitentiary were found to have superior intelligence. All forms of crime with one exception were found to be committed by individuals of