Institutions for Defective Delinquents

Institutions for Defective Delinquents (IDDs) were created in the United States as a result of the eugenic criminology movement.[1] The practices in these IDDs contain many traces of the eugenics that were first proposed by Sir Francis Galton in the late 1800s. Galton believed that "our understanding of the laws of heredity [could be used] to improve the stock of humankind."[2] Galton eventually expanded on these ideas to suggest that individuals deemed inferior, those in prisons or asylums and those with hereditary diseases, would be discouraged from having children.[3]

  1. ^ Ghatak, Saran (2011). Eugenics and Hereditarianism in the United States. Lanham, MD: Lexington.
  2. ^ Wilker, Daniel (April 1999). "Can We Learn From Eugenics?". British Medical Journal. 25 (2): 183–194.
  3. ^ Galton, Francis (1905). "Studies in Eugenics". American Journal of Sociology. 11 (1): 11–25. doi:10.1086/211373.