ABSTRACT
LET us take it that we have our offender before us, and that we have commenced our investigation by making a full and complete physical examination. The absolute necessity of this examination need not be laboured. It is not necessary to point out how certain physical defects may be very strong incentives towards delinquency. Tuberculosis, heart disease, hernia, defects of vision, etc., may all be, in a sense, “ causes ” of delinquency, inasmuch as they prevent, or tend to prevent, the sufferer from earning a living in the ordinary labour market. Various statistical investigations of the incidence of defects of this kind among the delinquent population have been made. But they are inclined to be misleading, because we have no reliable statistics of the incidence of these disabilities among the ordinary population. And, further, the delinquent population must not, in fairness, be compared with the general population, and we do not know with what section (if with any) of the population the delinquent may be compared. We have had, for example, researches which have proved that the offender is peculiarly insensitive to pain, and similar researches which appear to have the opposite result, these discrepances being due to the class with which the 28offenders examined have been compared. All the same, there can be no doubt that physical disabilities are of importance in the production of delinquency. And they should be, if possible, remedied. Visual defects should be corrected by suitable spectacles. Herniæ should be fitted with trusses, and in suitable cases a radical cure could be done. In an ideal state all this would be done as a matter of course. And there is one other point of importance. The amount of dental disease among delinquents is very large. The author does not suggest that it is larger than in the case of the general population, but it is admitted that the teeth of the nation urgently require attention. And we might well make a start with the inmates of our institutions, offenders included, they being under conditions in which dental attention could be easily provided. There is but little doubt that the irritability produced by certain physical disabilities (carious teeth, nasal obstruction, etc.) may be potent causes in the production of juvenile delinquency.
