"SOCIAL DEFECTIVES."

Auckland Star, Volume LIX, Issue 225, 22 September 1928, Page 17

"SOCIAL DEFECTIVES."

PROBLEM OF TREATMENT.

REFORMING THE CRIMINAL.

SPECIAL MEASURES NECESSARY.

(By B. E. BAUGHAN.)

[No. I.]

Here in New Zealand, when we meet a person who is blind, we do not blame him for not seeing. When we meet a person who is deaf and dumb, we do not say, "It's all nonsense; of course he could hear and speak as well as you and I if he really wanted to." No, we feel grieved for his misfortune, and thankful to know that are places in our country where such poor handicapped people can be so trained as to make their defect much less of a trouble, both to them and the rest of us, than it would otherwise prove. We understand it, because we can perceive it by means of our senses; and, because it is physical, most of us can sympathise with those so afflicted, can, see that they have a claim on the community for special help, and can agree that they should be given that help, even at a cost to ourselves. When, however, the defect is not physical our perceptions, understanding, and sympathy, here in New Zealand, are not qnite so wide-awake. Take the case of the feebleminded, for example—those "children in grown-up bodies," or in bodies that will grow up while the intelligence they house will not — our little country it only now beginning even to recognise their existence as a special class at all, and is still quite far from understanding, apparently, that they constitute a special class of defectives, which, if adequately trained and watched over with the same rational care as that we give our blind and deaf, can, like them, not only avoid giving us the trouble otherwise inevitable, but can even render good service to the community. Eventually we shall come to understand' it, because we are not fools; and then we shall wonder why we were so slow in seeing. For the feebleminded are apt to be,: when neglected, as we neglect them at present, both the perpetrators and the victims of hideous crimes, for which we have all more or less to pay; while, properly guarded and properly taught, they can equally become the happy and contented doers of extremely useful work. An Important Distinction. As it is, they very often, in New Zealand, cost us a great deal, either as patients in mental hospitals, where they really should not be at all, or as inmates of borstals or prisons, where also they really should not be at all. But here I want to stop for a moment and make a distinction. By no means are all those who break our laws and get found out and put in prison, and yet really are not deliberate wrongdoers—by no means are all these, who form such a large proportion of our prison population, feebleminded. Host of them, I should eay, from an experience of seven or eight years, are ■ot "socially defective"; they are only •socially immature." They offend against our social system, not because they really wish to 'annoy or harm anyone, but because they do not yet understand our

objections to the behaviour that to them • seems only natural. Notice my little , "yet"; the difference between them . and the "defective" is that, they can be taught to understand it to a point where they can become perfectly 1 civilised and able to live the life of normal decent folk without any specialised kind of help, while the "defective" cannot. I think, for instance, of my friend Hannah, once not only the dweller in, but the lurer into, gutters particularly vile; but now, thanks to timely effort, mostly on her own part, safely and happily living' a hard but clean and useful Jife. And of Dick, formerly considered a hardened and dangerous criminal,'but now for years an excellent citizen, having "taken the turn" when at last it dawned on hint that "where I went wrong was' that 1 didn't understand, when things went wrong with me, that other people mattered —I thought it. only mattered about me." Of Gus, and Gusta, his wife, both with "records" for years and years, who have at last grown out of wanting to run about on all fours (figuratively), who find music much more amusing than "spots," who have discovered that paying for their own furniture is a much' better investment than paying' for the publican's, and, in their own words, "have a lot to lose now, haven't we ?" But not one of these was feebleminded; their brains were all right; it was their social understanding that had for some reason missed its training in early life. And there are numbers of prison inmates like them. When, I wonder, shall we train "character nurses" to look after these, when first they begin to go against our lawsT We shall begin a real economy for ourselves when at last our own "social understanding" is so far enlarged. Child Stage of Development. But to return to the defectives who cannot so develop into independence, but, for some reason, remain throughout life "incapable," as the English Mental Deficiency Act puts it, "of competing on equal terms with their normal fellows, or of managing themselves and their affairs with ordinary prudence. Many years ago, in South Africa, I was told that the Kaffir brain never develops much beyond the childish stage. Housewives assured me that little Kaffir boys of eight had all the intelligence of a Kaffir or 28, 38, 48, and considered them therefore, as servants, quite "smart" as children, quite feebleminded as adults; while a Jesuit missionary explained to me that it was useless to try and teach his flock any abstract ideas, but extremely useful to teach them cleanliness, music, and manual work. And I often think that some of my poor feebleminded friends in prison are really only at a Kaffir stage of brain, and might really prove brilliant successes if living among a people only in that stage of civilisation. Indeed, I have seen Rosa, a girl of the type, not only a brilliant success and a much loved playfellow j in the midst of a group of children, but better able, even, to control them than was their own mother. Kaffirs are primitives, so are most children. So, I suppose are Rosa and her like. The trouble comes when Kaffir, child, and feebleminded have to cope with the affairs of a stage of development quite beyond them. The child may hope to grow up to it, as his body grows; but the average member of a primitive race, and the "mentally deficient" "feebleminded" specimen of a race more highly organised, cannot; and so, judged by the standard of the latter, are socially defective. . They are,, therefore, in need of an environment specially made for

them. If they are to be fitted in at all comfortably with our civilisation, they are in heed of special understanding, special legislation. Nor are the feebleminded our only class of "social defective." Seeking enlightenment as a 'raw and much-per-plexed young thing, in a London slum, how much denser did I find the general fog of life about me grow, one awful day, when experience introduced me to that drear fact! (To be continued.)