MORAL DEFECTIVES.

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume XXXIX, Issue 5328, 19 September 1928, Page 1

MORAL DEFECTIVES.

PREVENTION, NOT PUNISHMENT. A doctor writes in a Sydney paper: Exceptional children, particularly those preventing, sex irregularities, are complex problems, individually and collectively, and .their criminal tendences; create a social menace of vast, potenialities. ‘ . As a people we are too prone tc ; imitate the ostrich in matters even remotely related! to sex. A permanent solution, however, can only be worked out after frank and fearless discussion of t,he subject, in all its phases. Juvenile criminality often results. fr.om infherited disposition. Born criminals are with us always. Their parents., as a rule, are defective or degenerated, and' their e.nvir.C;ument degrading. These children need not necessarily bear, to the. uninitiated, outward o,r visible signs of abnormality The constitutional liar anil the, sexual offender are bright, intellectually, in many cases, making their recognition more difficult, and the danger proportionately greater. Mental .development, being premature, in contrast to moral immaturity, it. is unjust to. wqigh the: former on(lyand' allocate blairie, without considteratioin of the preponderating element. Idiots, cretins, and epileptics are geib era.lly accepted; as irresponsible, because no expert eye is required to pick them out. Less apparent defects are viewed with pronounced suspicion by the powers that "be, as well as the great, enlightened public. The possibility that the miserable creatures, may be bluffing to, avoid punishment creates an atmosjihea-e of hostility and mistrust. Po.or devils I Hated', despised, outcast, with every man’s hand against them, like leper;;.—unclean I unclean I The community awakes to realisation and howls for “justice” when stark tragedy stirs thear lethargy, to) sink to sleep again, untroubled. Draconian laws administered with the object, of punishment rather than prevention, are, doomed to failure, as proved by the number of juvenile offenders who graduate into habitual criminals. They rove, reciditists, repeating over and over again: their original offences.