'No Useful Treatment'

Only three of the 7.400 prisoners in St. Vincent de Paul penitentiary are serving indefinite terms as criminal sexual psychopaths, a Royal Commission was told yesterday.

The evidence came as psychiatrists, clergymen, social workers. and prison officials declared that changes are needed to cure such psychopaths and to protect society.

Witnesses told the commission. the majority of persons committing sex offenses nearly 300 complaints were recorded here last year-are treated under the general criminal law.

Some were given light sentences and soon turned loose.

Others, although they might be first offenders and amenable to treatment and reform, were given long "savage" sentences because their crimes were considered particularly repulsive.

NO USEFUL TREATMENT Col. Georges Lebel, warden at St. Vincent de Paul penitentiary, told the commission sex offenders "are not receiving any useful treatment."

The Royal Commission on crim-

inal law relating to criminal sexual psychopaths currently sitting here is under the chairmanship of Chief Justice J. C. McRuer of the High Court of Ontario.

Dr. Alastair MacLeod, psychiatrist presenting a brief on behalf of the John Howard Society, said:

"The Federal Government should establish one or more hospitals or clinics attached to one or more penitentiaries to which ali criminal sex psychopaths

would then be sent to serve their sentences, which would allow treatment to be administered at the same time.

"Alternatively, or until such federal policy is established, some co-ordination should be developed between provincial health authorities and federal penitentiay systems to provide treatment by provincial mental hospitals, or provincially operated psychiatric services."

Rev. Ivor D. Williams, chairman of the United Church's Montreal committee on social service, said moral and spiritual help should be added to treatment for sex offenders.

Treatment Lack Cited In Sex Crime Report

The warden

of one of Canada's major penitentiaries told a Royal Commission here today that he did not believe sex crimes were on the increase in Canada.

But Col. Georges Lebel, warden of St. Vincent De Paul Penitentiary, a federal institution housing about 1,400 convict. near Montreal, added that nothing was done in his prison to help

sex criminals, even those who had been sentenced to indeterminate terms of protective custody under the law relating to criminal sexual psychopaths.

Col. Lebel, who has been prison warden for 17 years, was testifying before a Royal Commission headed by Chief Justice McRuer of Ontario. The commission which is probing the adequacq/ of present laws dealing with sex criminals concluded

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