Mental Defectives and Sexual Offenders: Report of the Committee of Inquiry Appointed by the Hon. Sir Maui Pomare, K.B.E., C.M.G., Minister of HealthNew Zealand. Committee of Inquiry into Mental Defectives and Sexual Offenders
Science
Mental Defectives and Sexual Offenders: Report of the Committee of Inquiry Appointed by the Hon. Sir Maui Pomare, K.B.E., C.M.G., Minister of Health
New Zealand. Committee of Inquiry into Mental Defectives and Sexual Offenders
Mental health laws -- New Zealand; People with mental disabilities -- Care -- New Zealand; People with mental disabilities -- Legal status, laws, etc. -- New Zealand; Sex offenders -- Legal status, laws, etc. -- New Zealand; Sterilization (Birth control) -- New Zealand
The Board, which might be called the Eugenic Board, should be a central
Board associated with a special Department or sub-department, of which
the head should be a man of sufficient personality, energy, and
organizing-power to grapple effectively with this question--first, by
taking the necessary steps to compile a reasonably exhaustive register,
and afterwards, by co-ordination with cognate Departments or by
independent departmental action, to build up the necessary machinery to
provide for the care, segregation, supervision, or treatment of the
class with which his Department is required to deal.
The compilation of the register is a departmental matter, but
legislative authority will be necessary, to provide for compulsory
notification and to prescribe the means. A well qualified departmental
officer should at once be detailed to take this matter in hand and
formulate from the evidence given to the Committee and from other
sources of information the method and means of obtaining complete
registration.
The first step towards the formation of the Board should be the early
selection and appointment of a thoroughly trained and experienced
psychiatrist. Irrespective of the necessity for the employment of such a
man as the scientific member of the proposed Board, the Committee are of
opinion that the Departments of Health, Mental Hospitals, Prisons, and
the Special Schools Branch of the Education Department are at present
suffering from the lack of expert advice in this direction, and that it
is high time the Government had in its service at least one trained
psychological expert, with recourse to the services of other men with
similar training in the four centres.
The Eugenic Board should be vested with power to examine all cases
notified and, after due investigation, to place on the register--
(1.) Such persons as in its judgment come within the
definition in the Mental Deficiency Act of feeble-minded;
(2.) Persons afflicted with epilepsy associated with
automatism or other conditions rendering them especially
liable to dangerous, immoral, or otherwise anti-social
manifestations, and in the case of juvenile epileptics the
mere frequency of fits rendering them unsuitable for
attendance at ordinary schools;
(3.) Moral imbeciles as defined in the English Mental
Deficiency Act; and
(4.) Persons discharged from mental hospitals.
It should be the function of the Board to order or recommend to the
Minister the segregation, supervision, or treatment of the different
classes. Cases receiving adequate care in their homes would not, of
course, be interfered with.
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