e past few months in connection with the
Supreme Court Sessions in the various centres offer sufficient proof of
the necessity for some drastic amendment of the law on the lines
suggested by the Prisons Board.

SECTION 2.--SERIOUSNESS OF THE EVIL.

That the order for an inquiry into this question was by no means
premature was made apparent to the Committee by the presentation at its
first sitting of a return furnished by the Prisons Department, which
appears in the Appendix to this report, page 30, showing the number of
sexual offenders of the various classes who were actually serving
sentences on the 10th May, 1924. The total number of the sexual
offenders in the prisons of the Dominion on that date was 185. This
number represented 17.273 per cent. of all the prisoners then in
custody. Unfortunately, this percentage has since been increased by
recent commitments of cases of the most serious types.

A return compiled by the Government Statistician (Mr. Malcolm Fraser)
shows that during the five years, 1919-1923, there were 331 persons
sentenced in the Supreme Court for sexual offences as follows: Rape, 5;
attempted rape, 19; indecent assault on a female, 150; indecent assault
on a male, 50; unlawful carnal knowledge, 49; attempted unlawful carnal
knowledge, 18; incest, 17; unnatural offence, 23: total, 331.

SECTION 3.--TYPES OF OFFENCES.

It is obvious that included under the heading of sexual offences are
cases which vary so greatly in their gravity and in their very nature as
to have little in common. There is a great gulf between the lad
convicted of unlawful carnal knowledge with a girl who is under the
legal age of consent, but who in some instances may even be the actual
instigator of the offence, and the miscreant who tampers with little
girls of tender years, or sets himself deliberately to corrupt boys. It
was this class which the Prisons Board had in mind when it passed the
resolution quoted, and no doubt it is the class which the Committee's
order of reference is intended to cover.

This class of offence is held in so much detestation by normal persons
possessing ordinary healthy natural instincts that they find it
impossible to consider the question from a judicial and coldly
scientific point of view. It is evident, however, that this must be done
if we are to entertain any hope of finding and applying an effective
remedy to this cancer in the social organism. The evidence given before
the Commit