CRIME A DISEASE.

Dominion, Volume 5, Issue 1358, 8 February 1912, Page 6

CRIME A DISEASE.

.AMERICAN JUDGE AND HOSPITAL TBEATMENT. Is crime a disease, and is the proper cure not the gaoler, aucl the- Judge but tho surgeon? This is the belief of a good many American criminologists, who assert that physical causes and not moral corruption produce crime, especially in tho young, mid that it is as foolish to send a youth to prison, because he has been guilty of moral turpitude as it would be wrong to lino a man because he is so unfortunate as to be the victim of cancer. So convinced are pome Judges of the correctness of this theory that instead of inflicting prison sentences they turn the prisoners over to tho surgeons, to see if they cannot cure them of their evil propensities. Judge DeLacy, the Judge of tiic Juvenile Court of this city (says the Washington correspondent of tho "Horning Post") recently had before him a fifteen-year-old boy charged with burglary. • Judge DoLacy has had a long experience in dealing with youthful criminals, and noticed symptoms that made him bi'licve the hoy's condition was abnormal. He sent him to a hospital to Ik- placed under the observation of tho surgeons, who are to operate upon him if they think his criminal tendency is tho result of physical defect. This is not the first time Judge DeLacy hiw sent a juvenile criminal to tho hospital instead of the reformatory, and lie asserts that tho results have been eminently satisfactory. Incorrigible, lazy, backward, and criminal children, he says, have been cured of tlieir bad habits by surgical operations. So convinced is lie of the correctness of this method in refarming the wayward that ho has made medical examinations almost a regular part of tho Court work. h\ a few years, Judge Dtl,acy says, it will bo generally recognised that physical defects are frequently the cause of. crime. Physicians who have investigated the condition of tho children sent to them by Judee Del.acy have discovered that many ot them are not criminal in intent, but are suffering from eye, throat, ear, or other diseases, and either through pain nr nervousness they become abnormal. Children whose eyes or ears are affected cannot shirty, and they remain away from school; they are idle and fall into mischief; they become orimuinls not because they are naturally evil, but lx , - cn'.iSD cf the circumstances. To punish them simply makes them worse and hardens them. * The cure is in. the hands of thn surgeon or physician. Enlarged tonsils and adeuoids arc said to be the most frequent cause of juvenilo crime. Children so afflicted have trouble in breathing, become high-strung, become weak physically, and are so irritable that they caiuiot bo controlled by tlioir parents. They soon drift int,i mischief of some kind or another. Whenever the adenoids are removed by an operation tho children, it has been learned, usually become normal again. Judge DoLncy has had the co-operation of some of the leading snreeons and physicians of Washington. Dr. 0. K. Diifour. chief surgeon of Georgetown University Hospital, says: "T. Wre examined a great many children, many of them backward and incorriciblc, who would not submit to discipline, and in consequence were taken into tho juvenile court. Mo<t of these children had enlarged tonsils and adenoids. children were put on probotion, and their parents advised to have the adonoids and tonsils removed. After I had removed them they began to improve, and in from six months to a year were improved in every way, were amenable to discipline, thtfif bad habits were corrected, and thov bid Mr to become good law-abiding citizens."