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neously in the course of an interview that he supposed he never reached the climax in his detective experiences because he has never arrested anyone. Thus we see that along with his anti-social sublimation of his anal eroticism, the patient attempted a more useful sublimation. Unfortunately the one depended simply upon his exertions and bravado, while the other required for its fulfillment society's recognition of his desire and some ability for detective work. I am firmly convined that these two activities of the patient, namely stealing and detection of crime, are the results of his endeavor at sublimating a totally inacceptable homosexual career. On one occasion, and he claims that it is the only one in his life, a fellow prisoner in the reformatory attempted a sexual assault upon him. He retaliated by striking the fellow on the head with a chair, for which he was severely punished. While we may rely quite fully upon the information furnished by the patient and upon that obtained from other sources for the purpose of building up our theory of the case, it will not be amiss to take into consideration those points in the patient's conduct while under observation, which further substantiate this theory.

We have it from a reformatory official that while at that institution the patient frequently stole articles which were of no value whatever to him, that he did not attempt to conceal his thefts, and that when upbraided for his conduct, he stated that he could not help it, etc. At that institution he evidently entirely relied upon his stealing sublimation for his sexual gratification. It may be that he had as yet not become conscious of the possibilities of the detective play. In this hospital he had desires for stealing on two occasions, soon after his admission, but resisted the temptation. Following the manifestation of our active interest in his case, he became more and more confident in his ability to withstand these temptations, and as far as could be judged manifested a genuine desire to reform. Of course the biologic sex difficulty is still present, its demands are probably just as insistent as ever, and having rejected, for the present at least, the possibility for expression through the stealing channel, he resorts to the only other channel he knows of, detective play. In line with this he handed me one morning (March 30, 1915,) a note which stated that some in

formation had come into his possession which he thought would be of very great value to me, and requested a private interview. After cautioning me as to the method of procedure he assured me that he did this piece of detective work solely because he felt very grateful for our effort to help him out of his troubles. We must note the meticulous manner in which he carried out the entire procedure. For some time past he had been in the habit of handing me each morning a uniformly folded sheet of paper containing the dreams of the previous night. On that morning he had two of these folded sheets in his vest pocket but he handed me only the one containing the above note, because he says he feared that I would read only the one containing the dream and miss the other. During the interview which followed as result of the above note, he handed over to me a bunch of petitions written by a famous litigant in the criminal department, which were to have been delivered by the patient to his relatives with the object of getting them to their final destination. Aside from the fact that the author of these petitions was by no means a simpleton, or very credulous, it must have taken a good deal of ingenuity and skill on the part of the patient to gain this fellow's confidence, knowing as I do that the latter had a special grudge against the patient because they are the only two in the Howard Hall Department who enjoy some special privileges in common, such at attending chapel and amusements.

This compulsion of attending chapel as he puts it, with a negro, has been the litigant's chief grievance during the past two months, and he has accordingly expressed himself in some very choice language when speaking of the patient. Nevertheless the patient has succeeded in gaining his full confidence, and the interest and pleasure which the patient manifested in detailing to me his mode of procedure in accomplishing this is really very striking. It was during the interview that he stated, "I suppose the reason I never reached the climax when playing detective is because I have never arrested anyone. This is the work I would like to do, Doctor, I hope some day I'll be able to get a job with some detective agency."

I regret to have to omit many interesting details from the analysis of this case owing to the necessary limitations of a paper of this sort. To me the analysis of this case has been a revelation. For

a number of years past I have been intensely interested in the problem of recidivism, and although I have had many opportunities to study the recidivist, and have seen a number of very interesting cases, the histories of a few of whom I have reported several years ago, I have always felt that I had never touched the real specific cause of a life of recidivism in a given individual. Why a man, an apparently intelligent man, and many of them are far from suffering from a purely intellectual defect, should choose a career of crime and in spite of repeated severe penalties should keep on recurring to it, has always been an unsolved mystery to me. I have been especially perplexed about those cases which repeatedly committed the same crime, and although in some instances an apparently plausible explanation was found in an existing psychosis, or strong psychopathic makeup, these explanations were in many instances unsatisfactory.

Let us see what the repeated commission, of theft means to the individual whose history we have just reported. We have seen that his own explanation of that series of physical and mental phenomena which always accompanied the act of stealing were not only much akin to the physical and mental state which accompanies the act of sexual congress, but were actually recognized as such by the man himself. In other words the motive and instinctive prompting which led this man to the act of stealing were the same which lead normal man to the act of sexual congress. It would be inconceivable without further explanation why this colored boy should repeatedly resort to stealing as a means of sexual gratification in spite of the trials and tribulations which this carried with it, when he had all the opportunities to gratify this desire in a natural heterosexual manner, as others of his race have no difficulty at all in doing.

The answer lies in the type of sexual gratification which his stealing supplied. We have mentioned the anal sensations, the feeling as though there was something in the rectum of which he had. to rid himself, and which for years led him to run to the toilet soon after the commission of a theft. To one versed in the psychology and manifestations of the sex instinct this can only mean one thing, namely, that we are dealing here with a homosexual whose

erotic receptors were concentrated in the anal region, with an analerotic.

The possibility of a full, happy, satisfied existence for this individual lays in the gratification of this biologic, instinctive and perverse sex-craving. It is the intense revulsion, the protest of his whole personality against such mode of sex-expression which brought about the habitual stealing in this individual. So soon as he discovered that the emotional accompaniment of the act of stealing served to gratify this biologic sex-craving he clung to it with the tenacity which characterized his life of recidivism. In other words, the presence of sublimation of which we spoke took an asocial turn in this individual, with the resultant pathological stealing.

It would lead us far beyond the scope of this paper to discuss the problem of the genesis of homo-sexuality, and we shall not attempt it.

The impression which I desire to leave with you is that in this case of pathological stealing we are dealing with a form of asocial behavior which has its roots in a mighty, instinctive, biologic craving, which demands gratification at any cost.

Furthermore, because of the nature of this etiologic factor the chances for reformation are very poor, which prognosis has already been justified by the subsequent career of this patient. He is at present again under arrest for grand larceny and housebreaking.

It would be premature to draw any general conclusions from this study, or to promulgate any general principles of treatment. All that the paper is intended for is to stimulate further interest in criminologists for research along these lines.

BIBLIOGRAPHY.

(1) Goring (c) "The English Convict", His Majesty's Stationery Office, London, 1913. P. 440.

(2) Healy, (w) "The Individual Delinquent." Little, Brown and Company, Boston, 1915.

(3) White, (w) "The English Convict." A review in Journal of Am. Inst. Crim. Law and Criminology. Vol. 5.

(4) White, (w) "The Unconscious". The Psychoanalytic Review, Vol II, No. 1.

(5) Freud, (S) Psychopathology of Everyday Life. English translation by Briel. The Macmillan Co., 1914.

(6) Hitschmann, (E) "Freud's Theories of the Neuroses." English translation by C. R. Payne. Nervous and Mental Dis. Monograph Series, No. 17, 1913.

(7) Ellis, (H) "Sexual Problems." Modern Treatment of Nervous and Mental Diseases. Edited by White & Jelliffe, Lea and Fehiger, Philadelphia and New York, 1913.

(8) Stekel, (w) "The Sexual Root of Kleptomania."

Zeitschrift f.

Sexualwissenschaft. George H. Wigand, Leipsig. English Abstract by Albrecht in Journ. Am. Inst. Crim. Law and Criminology. Vols. 2, p. 239.

REPORT OF THE COMMITTEE ON JAILS, LOCKUPS AND POLICE STATIONS.

CHAIRMAN WILLIAM T. CROSS, GENERAL SECRETARY OF THE NATIONAL CONFERENCE OF CHARITIES AND CORRECTION, CHICAGO, ILL.

This report relates to the problems of penology represented in the maintenance and administration of local prisons. As a designation of this general subject, the title jails, lockups and police stations was adopted at the creation of this committee in 1911. It has been the practice of previous reporters for the committee not to limit the discussion strictly to technical problems of jail administration, and this will not be done in the present paper. The unorganized state of public opinion regarding a complete modern system of treatment of the misdemeanant class calls for a liberal interpretation of the scope of discussion in this section.

The following table is derived from statistics given in Bulletin 121 of the United States census:

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Many more important relationships are shown by these statis

tics which need not be reviewed. It is of special interest to observe

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