An Address by David C. Peyton, M.D., General Superintendent of the Indiana Reformatory on the Delivered on the Occasion of the Announcement of the Installation of a Psychological Laboratory for the Scientific Study of Criminals.

Jeffersonville (IN): [Reformatory Press], 1912. First edition. Octavo. 8 ll. printed on rectos only and bound at the top. Publisher's string-tied brown wrappers with printed paper title label on front. Excellent.This pamphlet lauds the fact that one of the very first psychological laboratories in the country was opening at the Reformatory at Jeffersonville (preceded by New York and Boston). This was a huge step forward in penal reform and reflects the growing importance of psychology in preparing inmates for the outside world. "The new laboratory was endorsed by academics and reformers across the country including sociologist Hasting Hart of the Russell Sage Foundation, Charles Henderson from the University of Chicago, Zebulon Brockway, and Maude Ballington Booth. Warden Peyton explained how the lab would disseminate knowledge and significantly advance prison reform. He also emphasized that both heredity and environment played a role in crime. Interestingly, Governor Thomas Marshall rejected this view because he said it would be necessary to reject the religious doctrine of original sin" (P. R. Clark; Barred Progress, 2008). Earlier it was commonly believed that the best course of action for the health of society was to sterilize the insane and "feeble-minded" inmates. But Dr. Petyton was of the new school of though and pushed for psychological reform rather than physical. "Fortunately for inmates, the big push for sterilization fizzled and was replaced by a more sophisticated and nuanced approach to crime and the treatment of criminals. In the summer of 1912, prison officials and the scientific community collaborated to create a department of research at the Indiana Reformatory. The psychology laboratory paralleled the commencement of the research department, but other sub-departments soon followed including those dedicated to medical and sociological research. The research department took individual testing, classification, and treatment to a new level. Using relatively new techniques such as the Binet-Simon IQ test, researchers tested inmates for perception, association, memory, reason, orientation, fatigue, mental activity, motor control, moral appreciation, the ability to profit by experience, attention, the ability to carry on a conversation, and the ability to plan. Researchers further classified the inmates by the kinds of criminal activity in which they participated. These categories included habitual criminal, born criminal, criminal through passion, criminal by chance, accidental" (Ibid). The Laboratory seemed to have functioned as both a guidance counselor and a low-skill trade school. David Peyton was a doctor, prison warden and a champion of prison reform and published Psychology and Crime (1915); Principles of Prison Reform (1915); The Differential Diagnosis of Crime (1912); Crime as an Expression of Feeble-Mindedness (1913) and many others. He once risked his entire career when he decided to allow the inmates at the Reformatory to fight a local fire.OCLC only locates 2 copies (and incorrectly gives the page count as 12).