HOOTON TAKES UP STUDY OF CRIME UNDER AWARD

An elaborate investigation of criminals throughout the United States is being conducted under the direction of Professor E. A. Hooton of the Anthropology department, who recently received one of the Milton Awards. Professor Hooton is carrying on his research in connection with Dr. Winfred Overholser '12, director of the division of the examination of prisoners in Massachusetts.

"This study was initiated through the desire of the department of Mental Diseases to secure comparable anthropological data to be correlated with the elaborate psychiatric and sociological records of country jail prisoners of Massachusetts which the division has been gathering for over three years," Professor Hooton explained to a CRIMSON reporter.

"At first the investigation was confined to an examination of county jail prisoners, but later it was thought advisable to extend the study to the more serious offenders in penal institutions of the State, and to the criminal and the civil insane. The investigation so begun has now developed, on the anthropological side, to a survey of criminals in selected areas of the country at large.

"The objects of this study are briefly, four in number: to learn whether criminals as a group are distinguished from law-abiding citizens by any hereditary physical defects or by any bodily anamolies which are due to disease or malnutrition; to ascertain whether there is any relation between the physical and mental traits of offenders: to discover any connection between the nature of the criminal's offense and his mentality; and to examine the relation of race and nationality to crime in this country.

"On the side of race and nationality, particular emphasis is being placed upon the study of negro and Mexican delinquents in the South and in the Southwest, and upon a number of immigrant groups in other parts of the country. This study will also include the gathering of comparable samples of the law-abiding population.

"I believe that this investigation is the most elaborate of its kind ever attempted, and I hope that the results, which it will take at least two more years to complete, will be commensurate with the time and labor expended upon it.