Deficiency and Delinquency: An Interpretation of Mental Testing

"Deficiency and Delinquency: An Interpretation of Mental Testing" by James Burt Miner is a book from the early 1900s that looks at how a person's mental abilities can be connected to bad behavior and crime. It talks about using tests, especially something called the Binet scale, to figure out if someone's mental weaknesses might make them not fit into society well and cause them to commit crimes. The book wants to get to the bottom of how we can know if someone is "feeble-minded" and put a number on it to better take care of people. The author thinks a percentage-based system can more accurately sort individuals based on their mental abilities and how that might affect society, which sets the stage for a more in-depth investigation in the rest of the book.