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sex offenders. Such legislation anticipates the participation of psychiatry in the disposition of the sex offender, having the basic aims (1) to provide realistic community security and (2) to treat and if possible restore the sex offender to social capacity.

In 1933 the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania enacted an act which permits a trial judge to require a psychiatric examination and report on any person convicted of any offense, and if such a report conveys that the defendant "though not insane is so mentally ill or mentally deficient as to make it advisable for the welfare of the defendant or the protection of the community that he or she be committed to some institution other than a county prison, workhouse, or penitentiary, the trial judge shall have the power by virtue of this act to commit such defendant to any state or county institution provided for the reception, care, treatment and maintenance of such cases or similar mental cases, in lieu of a sentence . . . and to direct the detaining of such a defendant in such institution until further order of the court." This law provides examination only for convicted individuals.

The act provides for appeals that apply in the same manner and have like effects as if the defendant were sentenced to a prison. The committee regards this law as applied to convicted offenders as commendable for both simplicity and comprehensiveness. If employed it is adequate to deal with the sex offender. It satisfies the aims of both community protection and for treatment of the sex offender under conditions favorable to restoration. If the offender is curable he can be eventually released to society; if not, he should never be released. Thus, commitment achieves what term prison sentences never achieve. It should enable the psychiatrist to function more intelligently for the court, unencumbered by dubious diagnostic expedients. The law places in the hands of the trial judge the responsibility for its application. For the convicted offender this act provides for commitment in lieu of sentence, and implies that a diagnosis of mental disorder is a defense for a criminal charge. Furthermore, in effect, the act places no limitation upon the length of time for which the defendast may be held by court order in an institution for treatment of mental cases. This law has the virtue of not representing legislation aimed with bias at a particular groups of offenders."

The committee recommends that the examination of such defendants be made by one or more psychiatrists officially attached to a court clinic, or employed by a state hospital system or in the absence of these by two psychiatrists appointed by the court as a commission. To the basic qualifications of licensure the committee recommends that any expert meet the additional minimum qualifications of no less than five years exclusive practice in the diagnosis and treatment of mental disorders. The court should not be bound by the psychiatrists' findings. In keep-

4. The Criminal Law and Sexual Offenders: Report of the Joint Committee on Psychiatry and the Law, London, British Med. Assoc., 1949, pp. 24.11... in regard to sexual offenders, punishment without treatment is not likely to have a beneficial effect; indeed, it can make these offenders worse, and thus more likely to repeat their offences. In a high proportion of cases imprisonment without treatment may have consequences to the community even more dangerous than to the offenders themselves."

5. It should be noted that the Pennsylvania legislature has deemed this act inadequate for Pennsylvania and in 1951 adopted special legislation dealing with offenders.

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