64 THE FAMILY AND THE NATION 



asylums, have been discharged as cured or incurable, 

 and are now in uncontrolled liberty amongst us. 



From all sides evidence was offered to show that 

 the feeble-minded, though not recognized as such by 

 the State, were nevertheless frequently being treated 

 and maintained by the nation in ways that were 

 not only expensive but were entirely unsuited to the 

 nature of the case. Thus it is noted that many 

 mentally defective children have immoral tendencies, 

 partly owing to their deficiency of self-control, and 

 partly because such children are peculiarly open to the 

 power of suggestion, so as to place them at the mercy 

 of bad companions. They begin their career of crime 

 at an early age ; for a long time they profit, to their 

 extreme detriment, by First Offenders and Probation 

 Officers Acts ; then come utterly useless short sentences, 

 and a life spent alternately in prison and workhouse 

 unamenable to the discipline of either, and outcast from 

 both. At present the commission of a serious crime 

 and the imposition of a long sentence is perhaps the 

 best hope for these unfortunate individuals and the 

 society on whom they prey. A medical officer of one 

 of the large prisons, where juvenile boy offenders are 

 admitted, considers that forty per cent of the boys 

 are feeble-minded. 



The same class of information comes from those 

 people who are concerned with the working of the 

 inebriate asylums. It is, moreover, notorious that, while 

 prisons and lunatic asylums are provided in sufficient 

 numbers to contain all those individuals who are 

 consigned to their sheltering care, the inebriate refor- 

 matories are wholly inadequate in number, and are 



