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Abstract

The sex offender has become an acute problem. Sociologists, psychiatrists, and lawyers sensing the imperative need for action have devoted much time and thought to the questions involved. Experience has shown that the sex offender is generally a recidivist; he has to be arrested and committed repeatedly for the same type of crimes. The point is graphically illustrated by the case of a man, fifty-nine years of age, arrested recently in Detroit for a sex offense involving a youth. An examination of his record showed that he had been arrested in 1899, when twenty-one years of age, on charges involving a seven year old girl, and had been sent to the Detroit House of Correction to serve ten months sentence. A year later he was again arrested for molesting a young girl, and was sentenced for three and one-half years. After his release in 1903, he was convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment in Marquette prison for attacking a nine year old girl in Highland Park. In 1923 this same man was paroled and thereafter was arrested twice on similar charges. No less shocking is the English case of the man sixty-seven years of age who, having been sentenced in 1898 to forty years imprisonment for rape, was released after serving eleven years of this sentence. In r929 he was again convicted and imprisoned for six months in the second division of Old Bailey for an assault on a girl of fifteen. Then last autumn he pleaded guilty to two assaults on young girls and received twelve months, the maximum at Lambeth Police Court. In both these cases it is evident that when the defendant is released there will be no assurance that some other child will not become his innocent victim. Confinement in a prison for a limited term does not meet the need in these situations. Such offenders should be segregated and kept in custody until it is reasonably safe to permit their return to society.

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