Recidivism Regarded From the Environmental and Psycho-Pathological Standpoints

Extract

The foregoing examples of degenerates, obsessionists, feeble-minded and mentally warped could be multiplied indefinitely. They present minor and less striking phases of the degeneracy and mental disorders met with in asylums, and require, whether at large or in confinement, some part of the care, supervision, and treatment which are accorded to the major degenerates whom it has been found necessary to certify as fitted for detention in asylums. In these institutions may be seen paretic dements, paranoiacs, precocious dements (katatoniacs), maniacs, imbeciles, terminal dements, etc., prone to, and who may have committed, arson; folies circulaires, hysterics, maniacs, moral imbeciles, and imbeciles prone to malicious mischief or criminal prankishness; erotics, senile dements, paretic dements, alcoholics, maniacs, epileptics, and imbeciles prone to indecent propensities, rape, sexual perversion, and the entire gamut of erotic besetments; general paralytics (first stage), imbeciles, kleptomaniacs, climacterics, prone to, and who may have fallen into the hands of the authorities for, theft; homicidal maniacs, epileptics, katatoniacs, paranoiacs, puerperals, alcoholics, and dipsomaniacs who may have committed crimes of blood, cruelty and violence before certification, or who by mere accident may not. These are the many points where criminality and lunacy touch, and it seems at present either a question of the degree of the mental warp or its non-detection which decides whether the asylum or the gaol shall be the destiny of such.