CRIME CURE.

Taranaki Daily News, 15 May 1917, Page 2

CRIME CURE.

BY SURGICAL OPERATION. EXPERIMENT ON NEW ZEALAND (PRISONER.- .__ It has been held by many social reformers that crime is a disease, and that the criminal is often the victim of his environment. New Zealand has hitherto confined its reformative effort to useful open-air occupation -for the criminal, and a liberal system of probation. Now the Hon. J. A* Hanan (Minister of Justice) has secured the endorsement of his colleagues in the Government to a proposal for surgically operating upon a young man who is serving a long sentence in gaol, for the Minister believes that there is a fair chance of removing the course of the trouble which appears to be responsible for the violent criminal' outbursts of the prisoner. The Bubjcct of the proposed experiment is twenty .years of age, -and is serving a sentence-for attempted murder. He endeavored to escape from prison, and during the course of this attempt severely assaulted a prison warder. A specialist in brain diseases examined the prisoner, talcing an X-ray photograph of his bead, with the result that it-was discovered that there is an abnormal thickening of the "base of flic skull. This, by causing pressure on the brain, is believed' to he responsible for the criminal outbursts which have landed the young man in prison, with very little hope for a normal life of freedom. Though there is not unanimity among the mental experts of the 'Dominion in regard to the provable resuTts of trephining—the operation of cutting out the thickened piece.of the skull—the Hon. J. : A. Hanan determined, with the approval of the prisoner's parents, to make the experiment, in the hope that it will enable him to live a useful life, free from his former criminal outbreaks, Similar operations have taken place in Italy, with good results, but this U th* first timo New Zealand has attempted to treat crime as something remediable by the 3Ui'g'«m's knife.