1909

Wm. Healy, at invitation of Chicago’s Juvenile Protective Association, organizes the Juvenile Psychopathic Institute (a clinic) to collect and evaluate data on cases brought to juvenile court. As Director of JPI, Healy, with backing of Ethel Dummer, was to serve as both researcher and clinician; he was to determine the “root” cause of juvenile crime from data about the medical, psychological, and social backgrounds of seemingly incorrigible repeat offenders (K. Jones, 41-43). Healy’s understanding of relationship between misconduct and mental processes was built on Meyer’s psychobiological approach to mental illness (52). Healy was supposed to find the root environmental “cause” of delinquency, but his evidence and clinics “represented a fundamental change in the Progressive code of delinquency prevention. The choice of a medical professional as chief researcher tilted the balance away from the environmental interpretations for delinquency that supported community-based solutions sponsored by child savers and maternalists” (57). In 1917, Healy and his psychologist (and future wife) Augusta Bronner relocated to Boston to head the similar Judge Baker Foundation (56-57; Noshpitz , 100-110).