MENTAL DEGENERATES.

Auckland Star, Volume LIV, Issue 50, 28 February 1923, Page 7

MENTAL DEGENERATES.

DRASTIC RECOMMENDATIONS. ADOPTED BY HOSPITAL BOARD. (By Telegran-.—Press Association.) CHRISTCHURCH, this day. Surgical treatment for the eliminating of mental degenerates was one of the recommendations placed before the Hospital Board to-day by the Hospital Committee in a special report. ': The committee recommended the board to ask the Government to bring. down legislation covering the following recommendations : (1) Making provision in the marriage laws that prior to the issue of a marriage license the contracting parties must sign a statutory declaration that they are free from tranamissablr disease; (2) as to whether a tribunal of experts should not be set up to consider each case before discharge from a mental hospital to determine whether prior to return of the individual to family life, steps should be taken by sterilisation or other means to prevent reproduction.

The board was further recommended to ask the Government to open homes for young girls of uncontrollable type and also to establish homes 'for feebleminded adults.

The committee fully endorsed the recommendations' made by the Prisons Board in 1921 in favour of an amendment of the Crimes Act, under which such offenders could be dealt with scientifically: (1) Before sentence is pronounced, by furnishing expert medical or surgical evidence, and (2) by sanctioning indeterminate sentence, by segregating persons so sentenced, and subjecting them under proper safeguards to any medical or surgical treatment which may be deemed necessary or expedient either for their own good or in the public interest.

Evidence was summarised showing that leading medical men and social workers favoured the proposals of the committee. The report was adopted.