Book Reviews : Crime and its Correction
| Author | M.J. Day |
| Date | 01 September 1966 |
| DOI | 10.1177/026455056601200317 |
| Published date | 01 September 1966 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
118
her
ability
to
communicate
sympathetic-
ally
with
adolescents,
the
institutional
worker
to
re-think
the
traditional
pro-
gramme
of
training,
and
the
community
to
accept
responsibility
for
re-integrating
an
offender
into
society.
Experienced
social
workers
will
have
met
the
per-
sonal
problems
described
in
this
book
and
would
welcome
a
more
objective
study
of
the
conflicts
of
adolescence.
A.
CALLUM
Murder
Followed
by
Suicide
D.
J.
West
Heinemann
35s.
Morbid
Jealousy
and
Murder
Ronald
Ray
Mowat
Tavistock
Publications
30s.
These
are
two
interesting
studies,
each
important
to
the
understanding
of
the
problem
of
murder.
Murder
is
a
rare
crime
in
our
community
and
one
which
might
be
rarer
still
if
the
symptoms
of
potential
murder
could
be
recognised
or
appreciated.
Dr.
Mowat,
for
instance,
suggests
that
where
a
situation
of
jeal-
ousy
is
associated
with
aggressive
attacks
or
threats
to
kill
on
suggestions
of
infidelity,
a
speedy
granting
of
legal
separation
or
divorce
is
essential.
A,tt-
empted
reconciliation,
however
well
meant,
might
fatal.
Many
of
the
monbidly
jealous
murderers
or
attempted
murderers
had
temporarily
separated
from
their
wives
or
husbands
~but
none
had
been
divorced.
The
delusional
state
building
up
to
a
murder
climax
is
usually
unresolved
and
unrelieved
by
the
final
act - indeed,
the
delusion
may
often
be
strenuously
maintained
as
a
justifi-
cation for the
guilty
act.
It
is
a
statue
of
which
the
origin
is
hard
to
trace,
but
when
recognised
it
should
be
regarded
as
a
danger
signal.
The
proportion
of
murderers
who
com-
mit
suicide
remains
constant
through-
out
the
years,
but
the
assumption
that
those
who
commit
suicide
after
murder
are
insane
is
not
necessarily
correct.
Dr.
West,
in
a
well
presented
and
compas-
sionate
study
of
murder-suicides
finds
many
of
the
murderers
committed
their
orimes
as
acts
of
altruism
or
pity
to-
wards
their
victims
because
of
their
own
fears
for
the
future.
Some
murder-
suicides
may,
in
fact,
~be
suicides
&dquo;ex-
tended
to
involve
an
innocent
victim&dquo;
as
Dr.
West
puts
it,
rather
than
acts
of
murder
followed
by
or
remorse
leading
to
suicide.
A
high
proportion
of
the
murder-
suicides
were
by
mothers
who
destroyed
their
children
and
themselves
simultan-
eously
and
a
number
of
others
may
well
have
been
suicide
pacts.
There
is
certainly
no
common
factor
amongst
those
who
commit
’murder
and
.then
take
their
own
lives.
&dquo;If
the
present
enquiry
has
done
nothing
else&dquo;,
says
Dr.
West,
&dquo;it
has
at
least
shown
that
the
indis-
criminate
violence
of
the
psychopath.
the
despairing
mother
who
kills
her
children,
and
the
unhappy
couples
who
decide
to
die
~together,
are
not
to
be
squeezed
into
any
single
motivational
theory&dquo;.
It
has
also
shown
the
madness
and
loneliness
which
may
lie
’behind
some
of
the
tragedies
which
go
to
main-
tain
our
steady
annual
-total
of
murders.
More
attention
to
the
aged
and
lonely,
more
understanding
of
seriously
dis-
turbed
mothers,
more
speedy
action
when
delusions
~become
morbid,
might
all
help
to
bring
down
that
total.
These
books
are
not
exactly
light
reading,
but
they
are
valuable
contri-
butions
to
the
understanding
of
two
groups
of
murderers
who,
’between
them,
probably
account
for
about
half
the
known
murders
in
this
country.
FRANK
DAWTRY
Crime
and
its
Correction
John
P.
Conrad
Tavistock
Publications
50s
The
Jute
Mill
at
St.
Quentin
Prison
was
burned
down
in
1951.
For
seventy
years
it
provided
work
for
the
inmate
but
had
long
since
become
obsolete
and
un-
economic.
An
efiicient
mill
replaced
it
which
substituted
productive
employ-
ment
for
meaningless
drudgery
and
so
qui.te
fortuitously
there
ended
a
system
which
no
one
defended
but
few
sought
to
change.
Mr.
Conrad
draws
the
ob-
vious
oomparison
&dquo;Inertia,
the
law,
and
the
inherent
bureaucratic
resistance
to
change
preserve
not
only
the
physical
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