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9 Prison J. 1 (1929)

handle is hein.journals/prsjrnl9 and id is 1 raw text is: THE PRISON JOURNAL DEVOTED TO THE SCIENCE OF PENOLOGY Published Quarterly by THE PENNSYLVANIA PRISON SOCIETY (Organised 1787) 811 South Juniper St., Philadelphia, Pa. This Number (Twenty Cents) Fifty Cents a Year THE VALUE OF PSYCHIATRY Address before Pennsylvania Prison Society at the Annual Meeting, January 10th, 1929 WINFRED OVERHoLsER, M.D., Director Division for Examination of Prisoners, Boston, Mass. Surely, although sometimes in appearance, slowly, penology is making progress. A mass-treatment of offenders is giving way to a method of dealing with the law-breaker which considers the actor more than the act, which makes an attempt to understand the offender and to deal with him in accordance with his needs and possibilities. In any consistent attempt to individualize penal correctional treat- ment psychiatry plays an important, not to say indispensable, part, as the specialty of medicine which deals with mental processes and with conduct (which, after all, is always the result of mental activity of some sort.) As one index of the extent, to which the value of psychiatry as an aid to courts and penal institutions, may be mentioned the results of the National Crime Commission's recent survey of the country. Of 1168 criminal courts which replied to a questionnaire, 110 or 9.4% reported themselves as employing regularly a psychiatrist or a psy- chiatrist or a psychiatric clinic. Of these courts, 10 were located in Pennsylvania. The comments made by the Judges on the value of Psychiatric advice to them as an aid in disposition were overwhelm- ingly favorable. As an interesting evidence of the recency of develop- ment of psychiatry as a court adjunct may be cited the fact that Psychiatric service in over half of the courts reporting has been in- stituted since 1921. VOLUME IX, No. 1 JANUARY, 1929

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