ABSTRACT
The use of psycho-therapy in the treatment of delinquents was a slow development of the twenty-five years preceding the war of 1939. By the outbreak of that war considerable results had been achieved. The method adopted by Drs. Norwood East and Hubert was that ‘medical officers of prisons should submit the case of any prisoner who was thought to be suitable for psychological investigation and treatment’. The reports of the medical officers were then considered by Dr. Hubert and ‘correlated with any further information that might be available from the official files relating to the prisoner’. One criticism can reasonably be made against the whole scheme of work. A great opportunity was missed when the experimental work described in the report was restricted to delinquents over 17 years of age. The most hopeful delinquents for the psycho-therapist are children and young adolescents.
