INSANITY AND CRIMINAL RESPONSIBILITY.

The article focuses on the report, prepared by a committee, related to the mental abnormality as a factor in the causation of crime. That a very considerable proportion of delinquency is associated with mental abnormality is very strongly emphasized by army experience during the war. Using the experience of previous war and peace armies it was officially estimated that the disciplinary barracks would be called upon to care for 50,000 prisoners. Studies of prisoners in civil penal institutions, especially of recidivists, reveal a large proportion of persons showing mental anomalies similar to those upon which exclusion from military service was based. The prime objects of society in relation to criminals are the prevention of crime and the reformation of the criminal. Punishment may be termed preventive when it takes the culprit's life or shuts him up within prison walls permanently. Delinquencies of exactly the same nature as offenses against the law may be the result of either personal or environment inadequacy or both.