Sexual Crime Today PDF
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SEXUAL CRIME TODAY STRAFRECHTELIJKE EN CRIMINOLOGISCHE ONDERZOEKINGEN onder redactie van J. PROF. MR. M. VAN BEMMELEN PROF. DR. W. FROENTJES PROF. MR. W. H. NAGEL PROF. DR. D. WIERSMA NIEUWE REEKS VI ERDE DEEL Today Sexual Crime PAPERS READ BY MAX GRUNHUT (Oxford) RUDOLF SIEVERTS (Hamburg) JACOB M. VAN BEMMELEN (Leiden) at a symposium organized by the INSTITUTE OF CRIMINAL LAW AND CRIMINOLOGY 01 the Unilletsity 01 Leiden Springer-Science+Business Media, B.V.1960 ISBN 978-94-017-5690-7 ISBN 978-94-017-6004-1 (eBook) DOI 10.1007/978-94-017-6004-1 Copyright 1960 by Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht Originally published by Martinus Nijhoff, The Hague, Netherlands in 1960. Softcover reprint 0/ the hardcover 1st edition 1960 All rights reserved, including the right to translate or to reproduce this book or parts therecif in any form PREFACE M. Grünhut (Oxford), L. Radzinowicz (Cambridge), R. Sieverts (Hamburg), J. M. van Bemmelen and W. H. Nagel (both Leiden) met each other at the first United Nations Congress on the preven tion of crime and the treatment of offenders held in Geneva in 1955. Feeling that it would be worth while to hold discussions on a single criminological theme on a smaller scale than that of an international congress, they arranged to meet again in Leiden in 1956 for a symposium on "Sexual Crime Today." This plan came to fruition in October 1956, when a three-day symposium was held in the University of Leiden under the chair manship of D. Wiersma M. D., Professor of Forensic Psychology and Psychiatry in that University. The symposium was organized by the Institute ofCriminal Law and Criminology, and particular ly by its Director of Research W. H. Nagel, Professor of Crimi nology. Mr. Grünhut spoke on "The Penal and Corrective Treatment of Sexual Offenders," Mr. Radzinowicz read a paper on "Sexual Crime in England and Wales," Prof. Sieverts spoke on "The Evolution of Sexual Criminality in Germany," and Prof. Van Bemmelen on "Sexual Crime Today in the Netherlands." For this last paper the statistical data had been assembled by D. E. Krantz, research officer of the Institute of Criminal Law and Criminology of Leiden University. The substance of Radzinowicz' paper has since been embodied in areport of the Cambridge Department of Criminal Science, published under the title SexualOffenees, with apreface by L. Radzinowicz (London: Macmillan & Co., Ltd, 1957). All four papers were discussed at great length by a relatively small group of Dutch and German criminologists, psychiatrists, judges and lawyers. Of the German participants, Prof. H. Bürger Prinz (Hamburg), in particular, made a most valuable contribu tion to the discussion. The texts of the papers read by Grünhut, Sieverts and Van Bemmelen (together with the tables and graphs compiled by D. E. Krantz) are now being published for the first time in the present volume. With sincere gratitude it must be mentioned that P. J. Coffrie, PREFACE Director of the Department of Judicial Statistics of the Nether lands Central Bureau of Statistics at The Hague, who was present at the symposium, has kindly given permission for some graphs already published by his Department to be reprinted here. It is hoped that, together with the Cambridge report, this book may contribute to a better understanding of the problems connected with sexual criminality and the treatment of sexual offenders. J. M. v. B. Institute of Criminal Law and Criminology, Faculty of Law, University of Leiden. J anuary 1959. Contents MAX GRÜNHUT Penal and Corrective Treatment of Sexual Offenders 1 J. M. VAN BEMMELEN Sexual Crimes Today Data on Sexual Delinquency in The N etherlands 20 RUDOLF SIEVERTS The Evolution of Sexual Criminality in Germany 51 Annexes 77 PROFESSOR DR. MAX GRÜNHUT M. A. Reader in Criminology University of Orlord Penal and Corrective Treatment of Sexual Offenders The studies on sexual crimes which are presented in this volume are an impressive illustration of present-day criminological re search with its strong empirical basis and with an elucidation of the facts as its principal aim. It is encouraging to see how, in all countries, criminologists are at work accumulating by minute investigation reliable data about antecedents, careers and after careers of offenders and the manifold circumstances of criminal behaviour. It has fallen to the present generation to implement, in concrete form, the idea of an empirical foundation of criminolo gy which our great predecessors, van Harnel in Holland, von Liszt in Germany and Enrico Fern in Italy put before us with so much boldness and vigour. But when all has been said about the nature, types and extent of sexual crime, there still remain the burning questions, What are we doing with these people? and, from a critical point of view, What shall we do with them? This twofold question is the subject of the present paper which deals with the penal and corrective treatment of sexual offenders. The subject itself and the quest ion which it is intended to answer are characteristic of the present-day attitude to crime and punishment. We are no longer content to mete out a punish ment intended as a drastic expression of society's disapproval and censure and thereby to deter the potential criminal. Our guiding principle is individual prevention, the responsibility of the state and the community to prevent the individual lawbreaker from further wrongdoing. As the result of a universal movement for penal reform during the last fifty years, the principle of individual prevention has become self-evident, the generally acknowledged -1- 2 MAX GRÜNHUT standard for the assessment of success or failure of the prevailing penal system. We therefore speak of 'treatment,' thus using a term borrowed from medicine. This has the advantage that it implies a direct application to a person and also has a therapeutical orientation. Treatment is not, as is sometimes said, an alternative to punishment, but its possible and most desirable content. Punishment is, or ought to be, an opportunity for the treatment of those defects which have become visible by the commission of the criminal act, or in the course of the examination of the offender. When we speak of the treatment of sexual offenders we must keep in mind that criminological types are not identical with legal definitions of particular offences. Acts of shoplifting by women and of stealing articles of women's underwear by men, are often sexually motivated, while there are cases of homo sexual activities committed from acquisitive motives. For the purpose of the present paper, the discussion is limited to men of 17 and over who fall into one of the three following groups: heterosexual offenders, homosexual offenders and exhibitionists. The question then is: What have we to offer for the treatment of offenders of any of these three groups? Criminallaw today has by no means an abundance of penal and corrective measures. With the progress of civilisation, the varie ty of judicial penalties has given way to a simple system of a few legal punishments. They fall roughly into three groups. The first is imprisonment in the sense of adeprivation of liberty in a penal establishment. It is a tendency in modern law to con centrate, for the punishment of true criminal acts, on one legal form of imprisonment only. This corresponds to the Dutch tradition. England has abolished the time-honoured distinction between penal servitude and imprisonment by the Criminal Justice Act, 1948. Imprisonment as a legal punishment had its climax in the 19th century. In the mind of the general public it is still the legal sanction, an almost inescapable consequence of crime. The other form is fines, a monetary punishment, and a favourite punishment in modern law. It is the sanction for the growing bulk of social and economic legislation. Its use increases in times of a rising standard of living when prison means a greater hardship and fines are more frequently imposed and
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