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 Eugenic Board, of course, should have power to remove any name from
the register if it is of opinion that there is no longer any need for
registration. There should be the right of appeal to a Judge of the
Supreme Court against the decision of the Board to place a person on the
register, and there should also be power to apply to a Judge for the
removal of the name from the register in cases where the Board declines
to do so. These provisions should, it is considered, effectively
safeguard the liberty of the subject.
The machinery necessary to deal adequately with this vital
question--vital in its influence on the purity of our race--must be
somewhat extensive, but use should be made as far as possible of
existing governmental and private agencies and organizations.
The work requires organization, and the first essential is, therefore,
the appointment of an organizing head. Unless such an appointment is
soon made the matter will drift. The heads of the existing Departments
of State under whom such an organization might be placed have already
more business to handle than they can comfortably overtake. Some one
must be selected to specialize on this work and this work alone.
The question naturally arises as to the Department of State to which the
proposed sub-department for the care of the feeble-minded might best be
attached. In the judgment of the Committee the education of
feeble-minded children should be continued by the Education Department,
which has evolved a very successful system and is administering it well.
After everything possible has been done in the matter of education a
large proportion, as they grow up, will be quite unable to hold their
own in the world, and for their own protection and safety, and in the
interests of society, must be cared for in some institution, where they
may be kept usefully occupied in gardening or farming, or in some
handicraft which will serve to keep them in health and help to recoup
the State some part of the cost of their maintenance. It is, of course,
most essential that they should not be allowed to reproduce their kind,
thus further enfeebling and deteriorating the national stock, adding to
the burden of the community and to the sum of human misery and
degradation. "To produce but not to reproduce" sums up the best scheme
of life for these unfortunates.
Looking at all the circumstances of the case, it appears to the
Committee that it would be better if the compilation of the register,
the provision of the farm and industrial colonies, and the after-care of
adult feeble-minded patients coming under Classes V and VI and "moral
imbeciles" were entrusted to a special branch of the Mental Hospitals
Department. It is essential that the feeble-minded shall be kept
separate from the insane, while the feeble-minded themselves, of course,
require careful classification.
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