JUVENILE CRIME

Greymouth Evening Star, 15 September 1924, Page 8

JUVENILE CRIME

NEGLECT OF DEFECTIVES. In a lecture delivered before the Queensland Justices’ Association recently on juvenile crime, Dr. W. H. Symes, formerly of New Zealand, said that crimes were traceable to two sources—heredity, and environment. Environment, and especially education might bring out all there was in a man, but heredity predetermined what there was to bring out. The lecturer said that formerly people used to say that the acquirements of one generation could be passed on by actual inheritance to the next. Expectant mothers used to read the classics in order that their children should be born with a marked' taste for good literature. All biologists were now agreed that acquired characters are not inherited. There was no evidence to show that the human race had improved since the dawn of history; what had happened was that we lived under improved conditions. Such improved conditions, the lecturer held, were disastrous for the race, because they were enabling many degenei*ates to live and beget children who would certainly have perished under former conditions. The unfit were so prolific that they were increasing more than twice as fast as the fit, who had to support them. When a human race emerged from barbarism into civilisation it had its highest quality as a race, because natural selection had for ages been eliminating the degenerate and unfit. They must substitute for Nature’s selection the more humane methods of segretgation of defective children, and sterilisation by X-rays of most of the insane. and' degenerate adults who were not Segregated. The optimistic doctrine that we could improve the quality of the race by education and more healthy surroundings had been exploded. Speaking of heredity, the lecturer said that the germ cells contained all the mental and physical characteristics which an individual inherited from ancestors, subject to the modifying influence of previous sexual unions, but the characteristics acquired by an individual during his lifetime were not transmitted by the germ cells. In fertilisation the characters of the two individuals intermingled and remained constant, but some were dominant and others latent. Just how many generations of selected breeding were required to eliminate any bad heredity quality was unknown, but what was known was that when a defective germ cell combined with a normal cell of equal potency its virulence was reduced by half, while combination with a germ cell having the same defective quality increased the virulence in proportion to their relative 'potencies. The lecturer said that every child should be taught the difference between right and wrong. A boy who inherited criminal instinct might, by suitable training, acquire sufficient self-control to become a useful member of the community. The criminal records were a solemn condemnation of the neglect of defective children. In proposing a vote of thanks to the lecturer, His Honour Chief Justice M’Cawley said he agreed with Dr. Symes when that gentleman had used the term .“idiotic” in describing our treatment of defective children. Imprisonment for alcoholism was futile. The time had come when greater attention would have to be given to the medical aspect of the treatment of crime. The judiciary, instead of being recruited solely from the ranks of those conversant with ordinary law, should, in the case of those dealing with crime, be equipped with scientific knowledge to appreciate the views of scientists.