13. The Criminal Record

When did this start? This need to measure people, lay them along the yardstick/ and describe them in reports? The more I read about it, the more the ominous and desperate feeling creeps up on me that it is too late to put a stop to it. About two hundred years ago, a train started moving that is driven by people. And those people are governed by the illusions of the day, by fashion, culture, the wishes and demands of the government. All of this results from a society that thinks more and more of its own interests, people who believe that everything is malleable. And all of this combined with an insatiable hunger for comfort and making money.

 

Psychiatry was invented as a science at the beginning of the nineteenth century. At the time, people were racking their brains what to do about lunatics rolling about on the floor screaming, chained to the walls of the asylum. The idea gradually took root that things had to change. It was found that not all lunatics in the institutions were insane, or incurably ill. Some patients actually improved with a different approach. A more humane science was born, as people in general started to care more for each other. In ‘A History of Psychiatry’ I read that the nineteenth century was also characterised by the development of a closer family life. Apparently, this had not existed before.

 

The word 'psychiatry' was coined at the beginning of the nineteenth century. Subsequently, for a century there was continuous discussion about what the science of human behaviour, the psyche and the nerves actually entailed. People searched diligently for biological disorders that could explain crazy behaviour. They were mostly groping in the dark. There were no machines yet that could look into the head without having to lift the skull. It wasn’t until after World War II that drugs began to provide relief from all manner of psychotic disorders.

Child and adolescent psychiatry has only existed since 1948, when a number of psychiatrists established a special section for it. But already for forty years there had been concern about children who could not sit still in the classroom. In the introduction to ‘Children of their Time’, I read a quotation from a Leiden professor of psychiatry from 1932: ‘It is known that children who have an attention defect, due to an increased distractibility and restlessness, also have difficulty following the normal education and show a form of backwardness, (...)’

 

In the early 1900s, when Montessori, Ellen Key and Jan Ligthart were working to renew education, Dr. Plantenga was trying to reduce infant mortality, all children between the ages of six and twelve were required to attend school, and it was discovered that not all children could handle school life without difficulty, the science of psychiatry and nervous diseases was searching for reasons for deviant behaviour, for going or being crazy.

I read a thick book on ‘The Psychohygienists’. At the beginning of the twentieth century, the idea found its way here from America that many psychiatric problems in adults had their origins in childhood. It was an interesting subject because mentally deranged people often got off the rails and ended up in prison. If we take better care of our children, a lot of misery can be prevented, was the idea. This also strenghened the motivation to send all children to school. Educated people find it easier to get work, don't have to steal for their food and therefore don't end up in prison.

A very young Dutch lawyer, who was actually going to America to do research in women’s prisons, by chance came into contact with the American Child Guidance Clinics. Her name was Eugenia Lekkerkerker and she almost single-handedly ensured that we were to have such clinics in the Netherlands also. The Medical Educational Bureau, or MOB for short.

In a brochure from 1911, the year Jan Ligthart wrote about his trip to Sweden, Eugenia Lekkerkerker speaks of these American agencies.

 

In the first place, the Child Guidance Clinics do not restrict themselves to children who are already delinquent or in immediate danger of becoming so, but accept all children who show serious character problems: children who are truant or have run away from home; children who lie or vandalise excessively; who are unruly, nervous, fearful, lonely or inarticulate; who have bad habits that they seem unable or unwilling to break; who have difficulties with their schoolwork or get along badly with other children; and so on. For such phenomena are usually symptoms of deeper-seated difficulties, which can easily undermine a harmonious development of the personality and a happy adaptation to social life, and lead, if not to the extremes of criminality and nervous disease, then often to mental inferiority, lack of success in study and work, nervousness, sluggishness, difficulties in adapting to marital and family tasks, in short, to a reduction of happiness and "efficiency" in life, which in turn, directly or indirectly, entails a loss of social values.

And so the purpose of the health centre is above all: mental hygiene, the prevention of everything that can lead to mutilation of the personality and thus to social inferiority.

 

This was written by one of the pioneers of our healthcare system more than 100 years ago.

We are living in the year 2015. I am writing and Peter is gaming. My beautiful, cheerful Peter. We barely speak to one another. He locks himself up. At night I can hear him walking through the house. I got up once to ask what was wrong but he got so angry that I have left him alone since. Now I lie awake in the dark trying to analyse the sounds. The toilet door opens and closes. The water tap is running. Is he brushing his teeth now? Is he finally going to bed? Under the door I can see the glow of the light in his room. Or has he forgotten to turn off the light in the bathroom again? Should I wait a little longer and then take a careful look?  And then it's morning and I've slept after all. Peter's door is closed. He will sleep until two, three o'clock. Then he'll fry some eggs, not clean up, stare out the window in the living room for a while and disappear upstairs again. ‘Would you like to help me with the shopping? With the garden?’

‘No.’

He stopped taking guitar lessons. He didn't practise. Not any more. He gave up competitive swimming a year ago. Just now when he has the body size to win competitions, he no longer goes to training.

 

Last week I received a letter from Child protection. Actually, Peter received the letter from CP, because he is now eighteen and is supposed to open his own mail. Mail about his failures and all the wonderful care he has spurned.

‘Mutilation of the personality and social inferiority’, Eugenia Lekkerkerker wrote.

Where have these people gone? The report of the CP skilfully and professionally summarises what Peter has done wrong in his young life, the offence for which he was convicted. The professional efforts of the CP office are neatly summarised. It is a conclusive document, so no one needs to be afraid of a complaint. The fact that Peter is stuck at home, without a diploma, without any future prospects, that actually he doesn't see any future at all, is nobody's fault. Not a single professional, from the school director to the care institution, is to blame for it. Everyone has done their job, ticked off the right lists.

 

Reason for closure: Juvenile probation is closed due to the end of probation.

Actual offence: School absenteeism.

Offence description: Peter stated that he did not go to school because of anxiety and physical complaints.

Conditions: A community service for the duration of 20 hours or 10 days suspended youth detention with a probation period of one year.

 

Then follows a list of all the care institutions that have interfered with my Peter, earning a fee for ministering to my child. And all the while there never was a moment where we thought: Oh this is it. These people are really helping, or here he can learn in the way that suits him. Here he feels safe, and nobody reproaches him for having his own personality.

 

At the end of the letter, there is a detailed explanation of the concept of 'criminal record':

 

The term 'criminal record' is still widely used, but actually no longer exists. All criminal acts (offences) that you have committed from the age of 12 onwards are recorded in the Judicial Documentation System (JDS) and are mentioned on the excerpt judicial documentation. The JDS also states whether you have received a fine, community service or prison sentence, for example. You can therefore get a criminal record from the age of 12.

 

A criminal record no longer exists but still you can get one from the age of 12. I have nothing but contempt for these people. Of course, they are good citizens. They are educated and they do their jobs as they are expected to. But I only want to hit them. I want to beat up the world. To punch until I can't anymore and then get off. I read. I try to make sense of it all.

 

When Eugenia Lekkerkerker started her pioneering work in 1911 to help young children grow up in such a way that they would have a future and stay out of prison, she could never have imagined that a hundred years later, in the year 2015, children would get a criminal record, simply because from pure misery they couldn't go to school. Because in those hundred years, school has remained an institution that makes many children sick. Perhaps Eugenia mainly had children in mind from disadvantaged backgrounds, from parents who could not read or write themselves. Whereas my Peter and his fellow delinquents are children of parents who’ve all been to school.