FLOGGING FOR SEXUAL OFFENCES

Press, Volume LXXIV, Issue 22419, 4 June 1938, Page 22

FLOGGING FOR SEXUAL OFFENCES

TO TUB EDITOB OF THE PBESS. Sir, —There is one grave objection to flogging as a punishment which I think has not so far been mentioned in this correspondence. It is, that a barbarous punishment demoralises many members of the community that order it, and seems to arouse in them a lust for cruelty—“sadism,” as it is called. This was lately commented on in England. where one or two sensational newspapers were publishing the details of two recent floggings. But what are we to do with our sexual offenders then, if we are not to indulge in “purely retributive justice”? Pamper them? Let them go? Certainly not! Catch them at once, try them, convict them (all painful processes. but wholesomely so) —and then try to cure them, giving them real “remedial” treatment, and so rid the community, not of them, but of their offensiveness This is where science could come to our aid. Physical science does so already. When shall we see the equal wisdom of applying mental science, which deals with human conduct, to cases of indecent exposure and other sfex-abnormalities? Psychology has actually cured such elsewhere. Why not here? The latest English Prison Commissioners’ Report lies before me as I write, and I copy some of the Medical Commissioner’s statement:. Much study is given in (English) prisons and elsewhere to the mentally inefficient or the psycho-neurotic offenders, and it is in these two groups that psychological investigation and treatment appear to have the best chance of success. The mentally inefficient group . . . includes the unstable adolescents, temperamentally unstable adults . . . alcoholists, drug addicts, sexual perverts. . . . The contributions of psychiatric medicine to the problem of crime have becij ... a more comprehensive outlook regarding the treatment of mental disorders and mental defectiveness . . . and the Introduction of new methods for their treatment. We can look with confidence to further assistance in dealing with the problem of crime as progress is made in these several fields.' Now. not all sexual offenders are mentally abnormal: but it has b«n found (in wiser countries than New Zealand) that the majority are. The offender against little children nearly always is. and I sometimes think that, if anyone “deserves flogging” it is ourselves for being so stupidly cruel as to provide no proper homes for feebleminded men and so protect our children from their animal passions. When shall we wake up and demand not only that help, but also the help of psychological experts as consultants for our Courts (especially our Children’s Courts), and of psychiatric treatment for those requiring it for the good of the general public as well as their own?— Yours, etc., . . B. E. BAUGHAtf. Akaroa, June 2. 1938. [This correspondence is now closed. — Ed., “The Press.”]