NOTES AND ABSTRACTS
F^minisme et science positive. — New conditions of modern life, with in- creased opportunities for work, have detached woman more and more from her family environment, in which now her help is less necessary nd less efficacious, thanks to the part society now plays in education. She should, along with these new activities in all other realms, be conceded full legal rights as well. — Francesco Cosentini, Rev. Internat. d. Sociologie, November, 1909. F. F.
Corporal Punishment with Especial. Reference to its Sezoal Aspect.— The objections to corporal punishment of both children and adults are: (i) it de- grades; (2) it is cruel; (3) it excites sexually. Most children are not ame- nable to kindness and reason alone. They usually see the justice of corporal punishment when wisely administered. Among adults the sense of shame is often largely deadened, and especially among hoodlums and youthful criminals bodily pain is the only effective corrective. Cruelty and abuse would be elimi- nated by taking corporal punishment out of the hands of prison subordinates. Such punishment is much less severe than many forms of punishment in use, as fasting, solitary confinement, etc., and is not necessarily demoralizing. How- ever it may produce sexual perversion in the subject, operator, or spectators, such as flagellantism. This is a more serious objection. Yet only a vanishing proportion of the more susceptible children are subject to this danger, which does not seem to warrant the abolition of the practice. — Dr. P. Nacke, Archiv. f. Kriminal-Anthropologie u. Kriminalistic , October, 1909. P. W.
New Legal Procedure Against Juvenile Offenders in Germany. — Whenever the offenses of juveniles are a consequence of insufficient training, the inter- ests of the community are better served by state interference in their education than by repression of the individual. Harmless offenders could thus be suffi- ciently corrected in the course of home or school discipline. The following are the aims of the legislature in this matter; to restrict the punishment of juvenile offenders to those cases in which educational influences are not effective ; to prevent the contact of youth with the criminal courts as far as possible, by meeting their educational and protective needs ; and by reducing the harm of an inevitable penal procedure by modifying its form in accordance with the demands of juvenile protection and the welfare of the delinquent. — Dr. Felisch, Jugendwohlfahrt, January, 1909. P. W.
Jngendfiirsorge und Staatsinteresse. — The movement for social amelioration promises to yield the earliest and surest success in the domain of juvenile care. Its essential advantage here lies in the fact that its material is the plastic rather than the fixed and finished individual. Any expense in money and energy applied to this problem brings by far the most fruitful results. All prevention and suppression of causes of disease in children is equivalent to an insurance against unemployment and invalidity in later life. Juvenile care and protection by the state, contributing as it must to increase the defensive (military) strength of the nation, to combat the causes of juvenile delinquency and degeneracy, but especially to reinforce the sources of the physical, moral, and economic welfare of youth, gradually shows its effects in the diminished expenditures for accident and sickness insurance, poor relief, insane asylums, prisons, reformatory education, penal courts, and police. Not least in im- portance, the co-operation of numerous men and women in organized and effi- ciently administered work of juvenile care trains expert and increasingly pro- ficient helpers for the high aims of the state. — Staatsminister z. D. Hentig, Jugendwohlfahrt, January, 1909. P. W.
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