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6 Prob. 1 (1950-1953)

handle is hein.journals/probj6 and id is 1 raw text is: 9PROBATION The Journal of the National Association of Probation Officers PRICE ONE SHILLING JAN. - FEB. 1 9 5 0 VOLUME 6 CONTENTS NUMBER I Page Page PROBATION & THE STUDY OF DELINQUENCY: IN OTHER LANDS: SWITZERLAND ... ... .... 7 Lady Ridley ... ... ... ... ... ... ... 1 BOOK REVIEWS ... ... ... ... ... ... ... 8-9 PSYCHIATRIC DISORDERS AND CRIME: Dr. OBITUARY ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... 9, Lindesay Neustatter ... ... ... ... ... ... -3 SECOND INTERNATIONAL CONGRESS ON BRITISH NATIONAL CONFERENCE ON SOCIAL CRIMINOLOGY ... ... ... ... ... ... 9 WORK ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... 5 PROBATION FORUM ... ... ... ... ... ... 10 EDITORIAL ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... 6 BRANCH LINES ... ... ... ... ... ... ... 11 CHELTENHAM ... ... ... ... ... ... ... 6 SECRETARY'S NOTES AND DIARY .... ... ...12 PROBATION AND THE STUDY OF DELINQUENCY By The Rt. Hon. Viscountess RIDLEY, J.P. (From an Address given when opening the Northern Branch Conference, Otterburn, October, 1949) I feel greatly honoured by your invitation to me to open this Conference, and am grateful for the opportunity it gives me to pay tribute to the magnificent service Proba- tion Officers are rendering to the community. Magis- trates are showing recognition of this service by loading more and more work upon your shoulders. Nevertheless I feel that I am greatly privileged in being able to express to you to-day in a more personal way, our appreciation of what you do. SThe task you undertake in becoming Probation Officers is a very bold one. You undertake to try to reform an individual who has strayed from the straight and narrow path of Society, after the great forces and traditions of parental responsibility, religion and education have failed. And you attain a remarkable standard of success. Yours is a courageous work-work which calls for great self- confidence, great ambition and great faith. For this problem, of the struggle of the individual to conform to the pattern of the Society in which he lives, is as old as the human race itself. A problem with which all religious teachers, all philosophers, kings and poli- ticians have been concerned, since men began to live together in groups, in tribes, in kingdoms and in nations. I am not convinced that the rise in the number of children convicted of indictable offences in recent years proves that there has really been an increase in crime. We have no way of knowing what the incidence was a century ago, but I find it hard to believe that the London that Dickens describes in Oliver Twist, was morally healthier, or that the boys that Dr. Barnardo found sleeping in the streets with no homes at all were better than boys are to-day when those conditions just do not exist. I feel sure that if we had any means of compari- son we should find there had been an improvement, but with our better methods of detection we bring more children before the courts, and have to decide how to deal with them or dispose of them, which raises issues that they never had to bother about 100 years ago. The responsibility for the care of the neglected and delinquent child has passed from individual charity to National Wel- fare and the public is aroused and alarmed by this new responsibility. I do not thi we are yet anywhere near a diagnosis of what the cau es are, and until such a diagnosis is made, I do not think we can begin to know what the cure will be. For unde standing of the human mind is at present in the stage t at understanding of the human body was in 400 years ago. It is true to say that before the dis- section of the human body, there was very little under- standing of the way it worked. Disease was attributed to humours, to ill winds, to spells and enchantments, to the Will of God in the West, or the law of Karma in the East. The mysteries of the human body are now gradually giving way to a more real understanding,of the nature of disease, and hence to its prevention and logical cure. But the relationship between mind and brain remains a mystery. We know that .diseases of the brain are mani- fested in disorders of the mind: that an encephalitis or meningitis, may leave a child mentally defective or so destroy the moral centre in its brain that a child who behaved quite normally before the illness, is changed by the fever to a liar or a thief. These are among the greatest tragedies we see in a Juvenile Court, and when- an uninformed public criticises the leniency of the courts and demands a stricter discipline, without knowing all the facts, it may be asking us to thrash a child who is as much the victim of a chance infection as the child who is paralysed as the result of poliomyelitis. All the same there are many grave disorders of the mind which the physiologists have not yet been able to relate to any recognisable changes in the brain, and while this mystery of the exact relationship between mind and btain remains, superstition and theory, as opposed to scientific fact, pervade our Councils and our Con- ferences. (Continued overleaf)

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