CONTRIBUTORS TO THE QUARTERLY. ON THE RELATION BETWEEN EDUCATION AND PHILANTHROPY. Edmund J. James, President of the University of Illinois. ON THE STATE'S WORK AMONG THE INSANE, Dr. Ralph T. Hinton, Superintendent Peoria State Hospital. ON CHILDREN. Miss Julia C. Lathrop, Director National Children's Bureau, Washington, D. C. Dr. Thomas A. Woodruff, Chicago; Mr. H. C. Montgomery, Jacksonville, Superintendent State School for the Blind; and Dr. William H. Wilder, Chicago: Blindness, its prevention and the care and training of the young blind. Mr. C. P. Gillett, Jacksonville, Superintendent State School for the Deaf; and Dr. George E. Shambaugh, Chicago: The education and care of the deaf. Dr. Thomas H. Leonard, Superintendent of the Lincoln State School and Colony: The feeble-minded. Mr. Sherman C. Kingsley, Chicago, director of the Elizabeth J. McCormick foundation: The normal but dependent child. Dr. Henry Helmholz, Chicago: Infant welfare and infant mortality. G. Charles Griffiths, Superintendent of the St. Charles School for Boys: The delinquent boy. Dr. W. H. C. Smith, Godfrey: The epileptic child. Mrs. Carrie O'Connor, Superintendent of the State Training School, Geneva: The delinquent girl. Mr. H. L. Harley, State Psychologist at the Lincoln State School and Colony, and Dr. William Healy, Psychologist of the Chicago Juvenile Court: The subnormal and the retarded child and the application of tests of mentality in the schools. ON GENERAL PHILANTHROPY AND SOCIOLOGY, Prof. Edward C. Hayes, head of the Department of Sociology of the University of Illinois: Sociology. Dr. Graham Taylor, Chicago Commons: General philanthropy. William C. Graves, Superintendent of the Illinois Reformatory at Pontiac; Michael Zimmer, Warden Joliet Prison, and H. V. Choisser, Warden Chester Prison: Correction. Dr. George T. Palmer, Springfield: Public health, housing and antituberculosis. Miss Elnora E. Thomson, Chicago, Secretary of the Illinois Mental Hygiene Society; Mental hygiene and social service among the insane. Sidney A. Teller, Chicago, Director of Recreation, Stanford Park, Chicago: Recreation and social centers. THIS ISSUE IN BRIEF. The population of the State charities increases 792 in a year. "Pitfalls in Criminal Statistics" was the subject of a paper read by Miss Annie Hinrichsen at the American Prison Association at Buffalo, October 11. Miss Hinrichsen relates her experiences in Illinois in attempting to secure police statistics in the various cities of the State. The collection of these statistics is being made under the direction of the State Charities Commission. The eight-hour law in operation in the State charitable intitutions of Illinois has proven its feasibility. A comparison of the number of inmates in the institutions at the close of 1912, with the number on October 1, 1916, shows an increase of 3,428. The number of employees increased only 842. The eight-hour law has, therefore, not added a third more employees. Dr. S. N. Clark, physician of the State Psychopathic Institute presents a paper on the "Development of the Conception of Insanity." That insanity is used as a cause for divorce in Illinois, notwithstanding the law provides that it may not be given as a cause, has been proven by a number of cases which have come before the State Charities Commission. In two of these cases the allegations that were used to send women to the State hospital for insane, were later used in bills for divorce and the decrees were granted. The situation as to feeble-minded takes into account the coming of Dr. Herman M. Adler to make a survey of mental defectives in Cook County; also a discussion of mental and chronological ages. Dr. George A. Zeller tells a remarkable story of an experience while superintendent of a State hospital. The State Board of Health issues a comprehensive review of infantile paralysis in Illinois during the summer and fall of this year. Public comfort stations is the subject of the October bulletin. of the Chicago Department of Public Welfare. The value of such stations is set forth in clear language. A review is presented of the Better Community Conference which was held at the University of Illinois last June. This review. is based upon an article by George A. Brown, editor of School and Home Education. What a county physician may do and how he may socialize his position is set forth in the report of Dr. H. A. Pattison, of Winnebago County. Judge Marcus A. Kavanaugh, in a Chicago court, revives the question of sterilization in Illinois. Thomas Mott Osborne's resignation from Sing Sing is treated by Winthrop Lane in the Survey from which we have made some excerpts. Colonel C. B. Adams, until two years ago superintendent of St. Charles School for Boys, has been selected by Governor McCall to be the director of prisons of the state of Massachusetts. Colonel Adams fills a position which has recently been created. Dr. Eugen Cohn has been honored by election to a fellowship in the American College of Surgeons. "Community Action Through Surveys," is a review of Shelby M. Harrison's paper at the National Conference of Charities. Peoria organizes a public health nursing association, which brings into harmonious action all the different organizations interested in that line of social work. A. L. Bowen, executive secretary of the State Charities Commission reports on his inspections of the State institutions since the first of August. POPULATION OF ILLINOIS STATE CHARITABLE INSTITUTIONS ON NOVEMBER 1, 1916. PITFALLS IN CRIMINAL STATISTICS.1 [BY ANNIE HINRICHSEN, Inspector of Institutions, Illinois State Charities Commission.] In 1909 the General Assembly of Illinois authorized the State Charities Commission to establish a Bureau of Criminal Statistics. One-third of a paragraph of a section of the State Code of Charities defines the duties of the commission in regard to the bureau as follows: "The State Charities Commission shall establish a Bureau of Criminal Statistics of which its executive secretary shall be the director. It shall be the duty of said bureau to collect and publish annually the statistics of Illinois relating to crime, and it shall be the duty of all courts of Illinois, police magistrates, justices of the peace, clerks of all courts of record, sheriffs, keepers of lockups, workshops and city prisons or other places of detention holding men, women or children under conviction for crime or misdemeanors or under charges of violations of the criminal statutes to furnish to said bureau annually such information on request as it may require in compiling said statistics." No appropriation was made for this bureau until 1915 and consequently it was impossible for the Charities Commission to comply with the law. The last Assembly appropriated for the bureau $1,500 and with this money, available for two years' work, the commission began the collection of the criminal statistics of the State. Illinois counts its felons after they are sent to the penitentiaries. We have never counted our misdemeanants nor have we made a study of the causes and conditions of crime in our State except in the city of Chicago. The only published official reports on adult crime in Illinois are the annual reports of the police department of Chicago, the reports of the Municipal Courts of Chicago, published every two or three years, the annual report of the adult probation department of Cook County, the reports of the three State prisons, the report of the Chicago House of Correction, the State Charities Commission's general report on county jails and two or three pages of police arrests and amounts of fines collected in the reports that are published in half a dozen cities in the State. The police department of the city of Chicago pubishes annually the number of arrests, the arraignments and dispositions in the Municipal and Read before American Prison Congress at Buffalo, October 11, 1916. Criminal Courts with a brief summary of nationalities, occupations, ages and civil conditions. Criminal complaints are not published. The report is a brief one. To secure the statistics from the State at large it has been necessary to send a representative over the State. The inspector of institutions for the State Charities Commission was sent out as the pioneer, as the explorer of a practically untraveled land. Mr. A. L. Bowen, the secretary of the commission and by virtue of this office, the director of the bureau, drew up a general plan of the work and the methods by which the statistics should be gathered. This plan included the arrests of the police department, the arrests of the sheriff's department, disposition of cases in the courts of the justices of the peace, police magistrates, city judges, dispositions of cases in the County and Circuit Courts and the indictments, with as much information concerning the persons arrested as the records might contain. We took Springfield, the State capital, as a starting point and the year 1915, as the unit. The same plan and the same methods of work were carried out in all cities and counties visited. There was no appropriation for clerk hire in the office of the chief of police of Springfield and consequently no summaries of arrests and no classifications had been prepared. The only way to secure the arrests and their classification was to toil through the chief's daybook. Fortunately this book was well kept. It contained the arrests, nationalities and dispositions of cases through the courts of the justices of the peace and the police magistrate. As there are approximately 5,000 arrests a year made by the Springfield police my task was a long and tedious one. The sheriff's books presented more difficulties, for there was no list of arrests made by the sheriff's department. The jail register showed the causes of arrest of every person brought to the jail, the nationalities, the length of time the prisoner remained in the jail and the names of the officers making the arrests. To separate the sheriff's arrests from those of the police it was necessary to learn the names of the sheriff's deputies. For disposition of the sheriff's arrests the books of the justices of the peace were examined. The records of the County and Circuit Courts are kept according to a certain form and their compilation was a comparatively simple matter. I next went to Jacksonville a quiet, residence town of 18,000 persons, 35 miles west of Springfield and then to Decatur, a city of 30,000, 39 miles east of Springfield. The records of the three cities were kept in practically the same manner. The same material was available with the addition of occupations and ages in the records of the Decatur police department. It seemed that there was a clear, straight road ahead of the Bureau of Criminal Statistics. Three cities, totally dissimilar in character, kept their records in practically the same way. Apparently, there was a uniformity of method in the counting of our misdemeanants and criminals. But I soon learned that the uniformity was local and not State-wide and that the similarity of method was due to the close geographical relations of the three cities. I prepared a brief report of the crime conditions in these three cities, showing that 26 per cent of the persons arrested in Springfield were pun. ished, that 69 per cent of the Decatur arrests met the same fate and that 87 per cent of the Jacksonville unfortunates received their just or unjust legal deserts. It showed the per cent of foreigners who caused trouble in the communities, that one out of three of the colored citizens of Springfield was arrested, that robbery was the favorite crime of the Springfield colored women and that selling liquor in antisaloon territory was the only misconduct of the Jacksonville women. I even went so far as to draw conclusions concerning the large number of probably unnecessary arrests in a city whose records showed a small per cent of convictions. The first two months of my work I collected statistics. For the last two months I have followed a different plan of work. I am making a survey of the methods by which the cities and counties of Illinois keep their records and incidentally I collect whatever statistics are available and even approximately reliable. I draw no conclusions concerning causes and conditions of |