STUDY OF CRIME

Hokitika Guardian, 23 December 1933, Page 6

STUDY OF CRIME

OUTLOOK .OF PSYCHO.LpCJSTS

IMPROVEMENT IN COURTS

SXDNEY, December 16

; Interesting " discussions have been proceeding in Melbourne and Sydney on the attitude of present-day courts to crime, and one alienist commented approvingly on the incheasing tendency of higher courts, to accept the teaching of psychological experts. Psychology, he, said, , was at one time treated’ as a fad, but it. was now becoming definitely recognised as a science. Politicians seemed to be the only. class , on which the modern ideas ma.de no : impression. When politicians, began to talk of crime and the psychology of crime they . did not have the slightest idea of their . subject/; v ...

Little by. little, it was said by another expert, a certain amount of psychological daylight, was penetrating the Bench of police courts,' birt it' was in the higher courts where most attention was being paid. Cases of obvious psychological' and mental trouble were the. syniptons were manifested in crime, frequently found more sympathetic treatment in the higher courts after convictions had been recorded in the lower courts. There were several organisations in Australia interested, in the problem of the . criminal, and they cpuld make their influence felt for the public good if only they cquld co-relate their activities,

■Ajiijqjig psychologists there is geberal agreement with ]J)r A. If. Martin, the , eminent psychologist of Sydney, who said that there were few; born crimin- ' ills. It is •• pointed out that under the ol.cj system, the police magistrate was always interested in the crime, and not in the criminal, That, was where ' thq, system, was at cross purposes with, .ipqdqrn psychological knowledge. It a map was convicted of larceny, io was .the larceny that interested the .bench. That was stupid. Larceny could; be the result of at least a dozen different conditions —true kleptomania, ■ .post-epileptic confusion, mental deficehcy, fqjr example. From a medical .point of view such conditions should .be treated, as disease, not as crime. It -was , tffe same with quite a number of; other crimes. The old idea was. that if a person committed an .act, it was the act that 5 , should be punished. # Another psychologist said: “The only case in which the term ‘born criminal’ can conceivably be applied is. a case, in-: which moral sense is lacking. That mental deficiency. Insofar as intelligence is lacking in that direc■tionr peifdotir is a ‘born criminalwhen the opportunity for crime arises. Criminals cah he divided into three classes. First there is the psychological- neurotic, who is a person suffering, from some form of mental conflict, .the crime being symptomatic of the disorder. Second, there is the mental defective, whose crimes are usually those such as assault and Jarrikinisro, crimes in men, and prostitution in women. Third, there is the. recidivist, who is a person with -what is ‘known as criminal-super-ego. Impulses spring from the sub-normal, hiid they are controlled by the superego' vjwhich results from experience and upbringing. If the super-ego is developed'-along} criminal lines from the beginning, because ..of .wrong parental influence, and lack of social instinct, the person is going to be a recidivist—a repeating criminal—because he has not got proper control of his super-ego,. The only treatment is to try and influence Ids control along proper‘lines ”