The etiology of paedophilia: a descriptive study of two groups of New Zealand paedophiles

Abstract

To the administrator of justice, the problem presented by those who commit offences of a sexually perverted nature is an ever pressing one. His duty is a most difficult one: to preserve the equal rights of all individuals. By 'rights' is usually meant the freedom of every individual to act in any way he so desires as long as such action does not transgress the equal freedom of others. The community has evolved penalties which must be paid by transgressors of these rights. Such penalties are scaled so that offenders forfeit some of their own freedom in proportion to that of which they have deprived others. The freedom offenders forfeit is finite, thus their rights after payment of the penalty are safeguarded. This legal system is based on the assumption that all men are rational beings, at all times in control of their own desires. From this point of view, people break the law for two reasons; (1) because they feel that the official detection of their crime is improbable and (2) because the advantages gained by the crime are, for them, greater than the disadvantages of the penalty. If this were so, in all cases, the perfection of crime detection and the stiffening of penalties should remove the possibility of crime and deter all potential transgressors. As history has shown, however, even though the penalty be death and the possibility that the criminal not be detected be remote, murders occur. Notorious were the pickpockets who operated within the crowds watching the execution of other pickpockets in the early days of last century. It seems then, that some crimes are not committed in the rational, conscious manner which legal systems suggest.