Society and the Criminal
- Type:
Book Reviews
- Author:
Sir Norwood East,
M.D., F.R.C.P. H.M. Stationery Office, 1949. 10s.
This book, which is in the main part a series of Papers read in recent years before various societies and published individually in their journals, covers a wide range of subjects of concern and interest to all those who work in the field of criminology. As the author states, they represent some of the stepping stones over which he has travelled towards a better understanding of crime and criminals.
Their being brought together in their present form has given judges, magistrates, members of the prison service, probation officers and others, including Psychiatrists and psychologists, a volume of major Importance and one which will repay careful study. Throughout all the chapters, the author shows his customary caution in basing his conclusions only ?n strictly valid premises. His approach is mainly Psychiatric, and all that he has to say is linked closely’ with the practical problems which are met ln practice.
. He discusses topics such as addiction; responsibility and culpability; crime, senescence and senility; sexual offenders; psychopathic personalities ; punishment; prostitution; alcoholism; and the reactions of society to the criminal, in the hght of some forty years of work in these fields, and his views must command respect.
He believes that psychiatric assistance in the treatment of psychopathic personalities and psychoneurotics who have committed crime is likely to ?e most impressive if precise views are held concerning the clinical limitations of the groups under consideration. Otherwise the psychiatrist may ail to convince those who have to deal with the offender as a social unit. It is to be hoped that this counsel will be taken to heart by those who are at times too sanguine in their clinical reports to the courts.
In his final chapter, ” The End is Forbidden ^lr Norwood East discusses in philosophical mood Matters such as medicine, natural science, exact science, law and religion, leaving the reader with a full sense of the author’s erudition and wisdom. J.D.W.P.
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