The Jewish population’s contribution to the prison population is much smaller than the ratio of Jews to non-Jews, declared Dr. Nathan Peyser, Public School 181, Brooklyn, principal, who spoke on causes and corrections of delinquency at Friday morning’s meeting of the Conference of Educational Workers in Correctional Institutions, held at Milbank Chapel, Teachers College.
Showing the small Jewish representation in corrective institutions, Dr. Peyser pointed out that, in the New York State Training School for Boys, which contains 400 delinquents, there are only three Jews. Out of the 450 men held in the House of Refuge, there are eight Jewish prisoners.
“The Jew tends to flee into neurosis rather than into delinquency as the result of discrimination,” according to Dr. Peyser, “in spite of the fact that in some cases the inferiority that is felt by the individual because of racial or religious prejudice may produce unconscious conflicts that may find manifestations in delinquency as a defense mechanism.”
Pointing out that the work of the Jewish reformatory at Hawthorne and the work of the Jewish Board of Guardians is meeting with marked success, the speaker added that the Jewish community has organized delinquency-prevention work far better than non-Jewish communities.
JTA has documented Jewish history in real-time for over a century. Keep our journalism strong by joining us in supporting independent, award-winning reporting.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
