Page Introduction
Welcome to the Breaking the Law Exhibit. Here you will find information on the history of self-advocacy and the rights of people with disABILITIES.Skip Navigation
Breaking the Law?
Imprisoned for Having a Disability?
Being labeled “mentally disabled” could have resulted in imprisonment and the loss of freedom due to erratic behavior.
Thought to have a mental disability, this man was chained to the wall of his cell for twelve years. He was considered too powerful and violent to be left unrestrained. He was found in these chains in 1814, twenty years after Phillippe Pinel’s treatment reforms in France.
Decision Makers
Criminals, and those labeled insane, or “feebleminded” were, at one time placed together in prisons and often were not segregated from the general inmate population.
The Executive Committee of the National Conference of Charities and Correction provided the guidelines for prisons and their populations in the United States.
The Prison
In the 19th century the prison system in the United States was found to be overwhelmed with inmates who had various types of mental disabilities.
The Western New York House of Refuge in Albion, New York and the Napanoch Reformatory in Napanoch, New York were no exception.
Reformatories
Large numbers of individuals with varying degrees of mental disabilities found themselves placed in the nation’s reformatories. These facilities provided vocational education and rehabilitation for lesser criminals.
Women and men were segregated in separate institutions. In New York State, the Bedford Hills Reformatory was for girls, whereas the Elmira Reformatory was specifically for boys.
The Almshouse & Poorhouse
Many times people with disabilities were placed in institutions such as an almshouse or poorhouse. While these facilities were not prisons, people with disabilities were typically housed with the general population.
Dorothea Dix
Dorothea Dix was the lead reformer of the prison and almshouse systems in the United States during the mid-19th century . After seeing the horrible conditions at the East Cambridge jail in Massachusetts, Dix lobbied for changes. Dix was bothered most by the placement of prisoners with mental disabilities, including developmental disabilities and insanity, in general populations of the prisons. Her effort led to the construction of a number of separate facilities for people with disabilities across the United States.
Josephine Shaw Lowell
Lowell was a reformer in New York during the 1870s and the 1880s, but her efforts had national implications. She was directly responsible for the establishment of the first custodial asylum for women considered to be “feebleminded” located in Newark, New York. Lowell also pressured the State legislature to open 3 “houses of refuge” including the Western House of Refuge in Albion, New York.
Lowell also founded the Charity Organization Society of the City of New York in 1882, that became the model for charity organizations in the United States.
Segregation
In 1921, the Napanaoch Reformatory was redesignated as an institution for “male defective delinquents.”
The Matteawan State Hospital and Prison, in Matteawan, New York, housed the criminally insane.
To Stay Out of Jail Help was Needed.
This postcard from the early 1900s was promoting a new probation plan for dependent children with disabilities.
The back of this postcard states that dependent children with epilepsy were sent to jail or the poor house because other institutions did not take them in. People with other disabilities suffered the same fate.
The Crimes
Certain crimes were often associated with people considered to have some form of mental disability. Psychologist Henry Herbert Goddard believed that all “feebleminded individuals had the potential to become criminals.”
Arson, prostitution, theft, rape and murder in cold blood were some of the crimes that had been linked to a variety of mental disabilities.
Who Is Likely to be a Criminal?
In the first decade of the 20th century, Henry Herbert Goddard advocated that people with any form of mental disability were more prone to become criminals.
His work, including The Criminal Imbecile and Feeblemindedness Its Causes and Consequences, focused on providing evidence for his claims.
The Evidence
The Numbers
This chart from Henry Herbert Goddard’s Feeblemindedness Its Causes and Consequences, indicates that the majority of inmates were “defectives.”
To determine the mental capacity of the inmates, they were tested using the Binet intelligence scale.
The Jukes
The Jukes, written by Richard Dugdale in 1877, studied the link between heredity and crime. Dugdale found an ancestral relation among 1,200 criminals and “degenerates.”
The Link to Crime: More Evidence
Considered a cause of social problems even in 1931, people with “mental deficiencies” were associated with crimes such as prostitution.
Also linked to mental deficiency were issues of addiction and poverty.
Evidence to these claims was published in The Mental Defective written by Richard Berry and R.G. Gordon.
Is Sterilization a Solution?
Indiana was the first state to pass a compulsory sterilization law. Dr. Harry Sharpe perfected and performed vasectomies at the Indiana State Reformatory. Even before the 1907 law, Dr. Sharpe had been conducting illegal sterilizations at the Reformatory. People with mental disabilities, including developmental or insanity, who were confined to institutions were subjected to the procedure.
The Indiana Law:
First in the Nation
The 1907 Indiana Compulsory Sterilization Legislation, the first of its kind in the United States:
AN ACT to prevent procreation of confirmed criminals, idiots, imbeciles, and rapists; Providing that superintendents or boards of managers of institutions where such persons are confined shall have the authority and are empowered to appoint a committee of experts, consisting of two physicians, to examine into the mental condition of such inmates. WHEREAS, heredity plays a most important part in the transmission of crime, idiocy, and imbecility: THEREFORE, BE IT ENACTED BY THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY OF THE STATE OF INDIANA, that on and after the passage of this act it shall be compulsory for each and every institution in the state, entrusted with the care of confirmed criminals, idiots, rapists and imbeciles, to appoint upon its staff, in addition to the regular institutional physician, two (2) skilled surgeons of recognized ability, whose duty it shall be, in conjunction with the chief physician of the institution, to examine the mental and physical condition of such inmates as are recommended by the institutional physician and board of experts and the board of managers. If in the judgment of this committee of experts procreation is inadvisable, and there is no probability of improvement of the mental and physical condition of the inmate, it shall be lawful for the surgeons to perform such operation for the prevention of procreation as shall be decided safest and most effective. But this operation shall not be performed except in cases that have been pronounced unimproveable. Provided that in no case the consultation fee be more than three dollars to each expert, to be paid out of the funds appropriated for the maintenance of such institution.
United States Supreme Court Says “Yes”
Virginia’s sterilization law was held up as constitutional in 1927 by the Supreme Court of the United States. In Buck v. Bell, Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote the Court’s opinion: “three generations of imbeciles are enough.” Between 1907 and 1966 over 60,000 forced sterilizations were performed across the United States of America.
Sterilization Spreads
California was the second state to pass a sterilization law in 1909. Those considered feeble-minded, prisoners displaying sexuality, and persons convicted of three crimes were forcibly sterilized. Prisoners would be later excluded but those placed in insane asylums were then added to the law.
Harry Laughlin can be credited with the widespread use of sterilization laws in the United States. His “Model Eugenical Sterilization Law,” published in 1914, was carefully written to be both constitutional and used often. Over 30 states eventually passed sterilization laws based on Laughlin’s work.
Hollywood
The movie Tomorrow’s Children portrayed “feebleminded” criminals and others being forcibly sterilized. In exchange for being sterilized the individuals were offered lifetime welfare and assistance from the state.
For a time, it was against the law to show this movie in the State of New York.
Of Mice and Men
The screen adaptation of John Steinbeck’s novel portrays one of the lead characters, Lennie, as a stong man with the mind of a child.
Not aware of his own strength, Lennie, unintentionally kills Mae, the wife of the boss’s son.
In what can be seen as an act of mercy, Lennie’s friend George shoots Lennie before an angry mob gets a hold of him.
Guilty by Association
The thinking in professional circles that people with varying mental disabilities were associated with crime transferred into popular culture. The “Little Moron” joke books of the 1940’s frequently included comic relief pertaining to crime at the expense of the low IQ characters.
Victimized Twice?
In 1992, Dr. Richard Sobsey of the University of Alberta conducted an experiment with two groups of law students. Both groups were given identical crime situations, except that the victim in one group was portrayed as a person with a mental disability, while the victim in the other group had no disability.
When each group was asked to sentence the criminal for his crime, the group whose victim had a disability gave a lesser sentence to the criminal; the group whose victim did not have a disability gave a greater sentence to the criminal.
Still a Crime to be Disabled?
As recently as the 1990s,the advocacy magazine Mouth stated many individuals with disabilities were being improperly placed in facilities such as prisons, jails, nursing homes and other institutions.
The Court Decides
1999
The United States Supreme Court decided in L.C. and E.W. v. Olmstead that the Americans with Disabilities Act protected people with disabilities against “unjustified segregation from the community.”
The Supreme Court ruled that services needed to be provided “in the most integrated setting possible.”
The Justice System
Various studies conducted in the 1980s estimated that anywhere from 2 percent to 10 percent of the state and federal prison population has a developmental disability.
In 1997, the Bureau of Justice reported that an estimated 347,000 State and Federal prisoners had some form of physical or mental disability.
A Death Sentence
From 1976, when the death penalty was reinstated in the United States, until 2001, 44 death row inmates who were believed to have developmental disabilities were executed .
Executing the Disabled
In 2002, the United States Supreme Court in Atkins v. Virginia decided that executing a criminal with developmental disabilities is unconstitutional.
The ruling directed that the states had to establish means to enforce the execution ban.
Determining mental capacity is done differently from state to state. Some states use a jury and others leave the decision to the discretion of a judge.