Prisons and the Mentally Defective
We learn from the Report of the Commissioners of Prisons and the Directors of Convict Prisons for the year 1934, issued recently, that during that year there were 222 persons coming before the Courts who were found to be mentally defective and were dealt with under Section 8 of the Mental Deficiency Act. Under Section 9 of the Act, 23 persons found to be mentally defective were removed from prison to Certified Institutions. In the years 1924-27, the average annual number of prisoners certified as M.D. was 257; in the years 1928-34, the annual average was 251; the amended definitions in the M.D. Act of 1927 appear therefore to have little practical effect, so far as this particular problem is concerned.
With regard to offenders certifiable under the Lunacy Acts during 1934, 112 were certified in local prisons, and 260 remand prisoners were found to be insane and dealt with by the Courts. In additon, there were 25 offenders found by juries to be insane on arraignment, and 28 found guilty but insane.
Two thousand, five hundred and ninety-six people coming before the Courts were remainded to prison for observation and reports on their mental condition, and the Commissioners observe with satisfaction that the practice of sentencing a prisoner known to be insane or mentally defective and asking for a report only after conviction or at the termination of the sentence, is becoming less frequent. It is regretted, however, ” that Courts of Summary Jurisdiction too often still fail to provide the Medical Officer with information which might be useful to him when assessing the mental state of a remand prisoner.” Only six courts have adopted the use of Forms of Information for this purpose, despite the immense value of reports of the kind.
In referring to the work of Dr W. H. de B. Hubert, as phychotherapist attached to Wormwood Scrubs Prison. Dr Norwood East states that the experiment had not been in existence long enough at the time of writing the Report, for its value to be assessed, and that certain conditions must be observed if such psychological treatment of certain types of offenders is to justify itself. ” Cases must be followed up after release as far as practicable, overdeclarations of success must be ignored, our minds must be cleared of the heresy that moral and criminal offences are identical, and the claims of the community must be respected. We must remember, too, that the treatment is concerned with offenders and not with offences.”
Dr East also issues a warning against the “exploitation of medical psychologists by certain law-breakers,” as a contingency which must be strongly guarded against.
In the Section of the Report comprising extracts from the Annual Reports of Governors, Chaplains and Medical Officers, some interesting observations, which are not without bearing on the growing recognition of the need for special education for retarded children, are made by the Governor of the Feltham Borstal Institution, now largely reserved for delinquents of subnormal mentality. He says:?
” The problem here is not so much to curb or guide a misdirected superabundance of energy as to remedy defective energy and application and to instil ambition and initiative. The feature of the Feltham lad as a type is that he is in need rather of toning up than toning down. He has to be regarded less as a potentially valuable citizen warped by a bad environment and lack of training, than as a piece of inherently poor human material inadequately equipped to cope with the stresses of a normally healthy environment and in need of shelter and special training if he is not to remain a social liability all his life. He is not, as a rule, vicious; just a born invertebrate, instinctively taking the path of least resistance. He has little interest in life beyond the immediate satisfaction of physical needs and desires, no ambition beyond the day, and his chief aspiration, if it could be formulated, would be towards a crude Nirvana in which no physical or mental effort would be required of him, and in which the voice of carping authority would be stilled for ever.”
The Medical Officer of Wormwood Scrubs Prison reports that the intelligence level of young offenders received is of a slightly inferior order than was formerly the case, and that a correspondingly lower grade of inmate is passing on to the Borstal Institutions. This opinion is borne out by the Governor of the Aylesbury Borstal Institution who states that:
” the type of reception has been deteriorating during the past three years, but in 1934 the decline was much sharper than formerly. The old hooligan type of girl with sound character at bottom has entirely disappeared, to be replaced by crafty girls with low cunning, who are undisciplined and lazy.”
The disclosure of these somewhat disquieting facts seems to offer a tempting field for research which we hope may, at some time, be followed up.
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