the great mistake of using our own ways of looking at things as if it were their way of looking at things; and I am sure it is not.

Dr. Gray: I would add that the mere arrest is a great punishment for many sex offenders that I have seen. The severity of punishment wouldn't have made any material difference in deterring them.

Chairman: Is it your view that the certainty of arrest or the likelihood of being arrested has much more effect than the severity of the punishment?

Dr. Gray: Yes, that is putting

it quite clearly.

Chairman: Then do you believe many sex deviates murder to conceal their crimes?

Dr. Brancale: It is a hard question. I have seen two or three situations where the crime of violence was born out of anxiety and panic. I believe that very few sex deviates commit murder in the first place, and I believe that homicide is usually committed by the pathological type of individual who doesn't usually show a repetitive pattern of sexual crime.

Vengeful Steps Won't Solve Problem of Sex Offenders

The Citizens' Forum on Sex Offenders, sponsored by The Star, should do much to clear away public misunderstanding of this difficult subject.

In this, as in many other fields, it is the ignorant who are most confident they have the right answers, while those who know most are reluctant to advance "cures."

The experts on the Forum panel offered society no easy deliverance from the burden of sex offenders and crimes. But they did make it clear most remedies propounded by the lay man, especially during the emotional binge that follows a major sex crime, are futile or worse.

For example, they made nonsense of the demand (which has been espoused even by a member of Parliament) that all sex deviates should be locked up. They established that most types of sex deviates are not dangerous to others, and that those given to non-violent aberrations seldom graduate to violent attacks.

The question of surgery for sex criminals was left open for further investigation, although the panel cau-

one

tioned against expecting too much from this course, since it was agreed that most sex offenders are victims of personality and psychological disturbances, and are not abnormal in their physical make-up.

Dr. Ralph Brancale, speaking from knowledge of 2.000 sex offenders in New Jersey, said there should be less reliance on penalties and more on treatment as a means of reforming sex offenders. Serving time in prison is no remedy, and the more deep-seated the person's trouble, the less effective punishment is likely to be.

The panel left the impression that Ontario is at present woefully illequipped for the scientific study and treatment of sex offenders. There are not enough psychiatrists attached to our courts and to the department of reform institutions, and there are not enough institutions to which sex offenders can he sent with a chance of improving their condition and protecting the community against them. Here the forum pointed clearly the direction that action should take if real progress is to be made on this problem.

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