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

by New Zealand. Committee of Inquiry into Mental Defectives and Sexual Offenders

Section 11.—Segregation.

It will be neither possible nor desirable to segregate all mental defectives. Feeble-minded children who are receiving adequate care and training in their own homes will, of course, be left there. When they reach the age of adolescence the question of their disposal should be considered by the Board. In many cases the inmates of special schools, after they have received some training, would do well if returned to their homes or boarded out in selected foster-homes under supervision.

The real difficulty arises, especially in the case of girls, when the age of adolescence is reached.

In the opinion of the Committee it is of the utmost importance that mental defectives should be prevented from reproducing. No person who has been placed on the register should be allowed to marry until the Eugenic Board has given its consent by removing the name from the register.

It is altogether wrong to suppose that there is any unkindness in taking the feeble-minded, who are unable to battle for themselves, under the care of the State and preventing them from bringing forth another generation of defectives. The real unkindness consists in allowing such unfortunates to be brought into the world.

In school, and still more in the after-struggle for existence, the feeble-minded find themselves the butts of their fellows, and the "inferiority complex" thus developed tends to make them sink lower in the scale both in intellect and morals.

"On the other hand, it is the general experience of those who have had many years' practical experience with defectives that the majority are far happier in suitable institutions engaged in congenial occupations, and having the companionship of their mental equals, than when they are exposed to the difficulties of an outside world to which they are incapable of adapting themselves. In many cases, indeed, such freedom amounts to the infliction of positive cruelty."

This statement is taken from the memorandum of the Central Association for Mental Welfare of Great Britain, to which reference has already been made, and this Committee can, from their own observation, endorse the views thus expressed.

It seems desirable, however, to point out the fallacy of a popular idea that the world could easily stamp out defectives and degenerates by merely adopting a vigorous policy of segregation and sterilization. Even if it were possible by these means to prevent all manifest mental defectives from reproducing, it cannot be expected that this class will be thereby eliminated from the population, since mental defectives may be the offspring of apparently normal stocks, or may be descended from stock in which only minor manifestations of impaired nervous vitality, such as instability, eccentricity, &c., have hitherto been evident, and in a large proportion of cases they are no doubt the progeny of persons belonging to the higher grade of distinctly degenerate stock—persons who have not themselves necessarily shown any marked traits of instability or degeneracy, and to whom therefore sterilization or segregation would be inapplicable.