Sterilisation and Mental Deficiency

THE conditions which exist in a modern organised community are so exceedingly complicated that ability above the ordinary is demanded of those who would cope with them. The environment which man has created is not the optimal for many biological types, and this is certainly true of the certifiable mental defectives, whose numbers have doubled during the last twenty years, and of whom it is estimated there are now no less than 300,000 in England and Wales alone (Report of the Mental Deficiency Committee of the Boards of Education and Control, 1929). It has long been recognised that these require a special environment of their own in which they are not forced to compete with their normal fellow-men, and where they are out of harm's way; and so, for them, appropriate institutional accommodation has been devised. But the country is not prepared to find the money wherewith to provide such segregation for 300,000. In fact, only about 25,000 are thus sheltered. A further 50,000 are under guardianship, whilst the rest are scattered amongst the general population, relatively uncontrolled and unprotected, to constitute a most serious social problem.