SEXUAL OFFENCES. TO THE EDITOR.

Evening Post, Volume LXXXII, Issue 62, 11 September 1911, Page 3

SEXUAL OFFENCES. TO THE EDITOR.

Sir,— When t read the opening sentences of your editorial to-night upon "Sexual Offences" I hoped I was going to find you advocating the only sensible remedy— tha sterilisation of the brutes. I was greatly disappointed on discovering that you were merely advocating Hogging. You are on the side of severity, and lam with. you. But I do think it k a grievous mistake to' rely upon the value of inevitable flogging as a deterrent. To begin, with, flogging as a deterrent is not comparable with long terms of imprisonment. And do long terms of imprisonment deter? They do not. If you reflect upon this horrid fact, 1 ca-nnot eefe how you can come to any other conclusion than this : that a person willing to commit a. crime against a little girl, and finding himself in what he coneidere circumstances favourable to the commission of the offence, simply doesn't think of the penalty at all, Mere comee the crucial question (and I put it so as to give you every advantage in your argument because 1 only want to get at the truth of thd matter, the same a« yop): Would any "person willing to commit the offence in question, or liable to commit it, b« in the smallest degred restrained from committing it m what he considered favourable circumstances if he knew, and, knowing, lemembered, that the punishment, m event of detection would be flogging? I am sure you will ccc that the answer must be in the negative. The fact is, that theee brutes cannot be deterred excepting by the pio* vision of Capital punishment. That \& the only 'deterrent for persons liable or willing to commit this ghastly crime. Personally, I should rejoice; but I know that thie floppy public of to-day, which regards sin as a symptom of indigestion, inveteracy in crime as a dieeas«, criminals as invalids, good oldfashioned puftiehment a relic of barbar* ism, the cat "as an offence against the ,third person of the Trinity, and so on— that this public would not «tand such a drastic law. Or, what is the same thing, that the ediiors and the politicians would not persuade them to stand it. Deterrent* being useless, utterly useless, what is the next best thing? Why, surely to make the punishment fit the crime. And this can b» done by providing that sexual offenders shall be sterilised. Sterilised, mind you, as ' a punishment. A man commits a mur* I de-t : tte perform an extreme surgical operation on him as^ a punishment and deterrent combined, "and one good re- | suit is that incidentally we prevent him from committing other murders. So also in thjs case. Like all wise policies, this wise policy will have good results as a by-produrt. In this case- the by-product would be the gradual purification of the hum*n stream, or, rather, the gradual disinfection of it co far as one particular Septic spring is concerned. Not long ago I was one of a little party of whom two were doctors in this town, and we discussed this matter, and we all agreed that the remedy here suggested is the best, because the only one that is effective itt any "total"' estimate. I have no patience with the ettgeniels, who think that a man can be made an angel bs being treated as a cla-"* of live stock. The treatment I suggest 1 urge only as a punitive treatment, not as an idea, based on eugeniet crotchet*. Deterrents being of no value in this case, let us get out of our head the idea of providing deterrents at all. Let us simply punish the criminals, and punish them in. the only adequate way — a way that is strictly ill accord with the principles of British criminal law, and that happens also to have the recommendation that it would have good results to society in preventing further crimes by once-pun* ished criminals, and in preventing also the propagation of crooked human beings. It is the only punishment that reforms the criminal so far as the particular crime is concerned. Gaol a forger, and you leave him Competent to forge again. Th» burglar is as good a burglar as ever when he comes out of gaof But the e&xual animal, if treated a« I suggest, ;« transformed.— *l am, CtC " ANW-HtJMBUG. Wellington, Bth September, 1911.