19/01/2024
"In 1966, New York Gov. Nelson Rockefeller, whose family foundation helped establish the Allan Memorial Institute, launched a partnership whereby a team of McGill consultants were brought to New York to establish programs and conduct research at the Dannemora State Hospital for the Criminally Insane, according to Canadian psychiatrist Bruno Cormierโs 1975 book The Watcher and the Watched. Located in a remote hamlet 25 miles south of New Yorkโs northernmost border with Quebec, the institution confined prisoners who were transferred from other state facilities after being deemed โinsaneโ by prison doctors.
The official purpose of the collaboration was to develop new methods for preventing recidivism. However, the program hosted โexperimental studies of various aspects of criminal behavior,โ noted a report from 1968. The following year an attendee of a conference about the program noted that a large number of its participants were Black.
An affidavit authored by anthropologist Phillippe Blouin in support of the Mohawk Mothers identified the late psychiatrist Cormier as a person of interest. Blouin located correspondence between lead โSubproject 68โ psychologist Cameron and Cormier, who worked as a clinician at the Allan Memorial Institute during the 1950s and 1960s. Authored between 1957 and 1963, the exchanges pertain to a proposal for a Pilot Centre for Juvenile Delinquency, which would include laboratories โfor psychological studies, for work in genetics, for endocrinological investigations, for sociological studies, both within the unit and also for field work.โ
Commenting on the proposal, Cormier suggests that the centerโs purview should not be limited to rehabilitation. He stresses that โresearch of this kind should bring light on all behavioral problemsโ and that it had the potential to โbridge the research gap between juvenile delinquency and adult criminality.โ
Not long after this exchange, New York officials selected him to lead the Memorial Instituteโsa
