author
New Zealand. Committee of Inquiry into Mental Defectives and Sexual Offenders
A formal New Zealand government committee produced this 1925 report, examining how the state approached mental disability, institutional care, and sexual offending in the early twentieth century. Read today, it offers a stark historical record of official thinking, public policy, and the language of its time.
1 Audiobook
Mental Defectives and Sexual Offenders Report of the Committee of Inquiry Appointed by the Hon. Sir Maui Pomare, K.B.E., C.M.G., Minister of Health
by New Zealand. Committee of Inquiry into Mental Defectives and Sexual Offenders
About the author
This work was issued by a New Zealand government committee of inquiry, not by a single individual author. The report was prepared for the Minister of Health and published in 1925 as an official investigation into the treatment and control of people then described in the report's terminology as "mental defectives" and sexual offenders.
Because it is a committee report, the "author" credit refers to the body responsible for the inquiry rather than to one personal biography. Contemporary editions and library records identify it under New Zealand. Committee of Inquiry into Mental Defectives and Sexual Offenders, and surviving copies show it was submitted as part of New Zealand's parliamentary record.
For modern listeners and readers, the report is mainly valuable as a historical document. Its language and assumptions reflect the policies and attitudes of its era, including ideas that are now widely rejected, but that context also makes it important for understanding the history of public health, disability policy, and criminal justice in New Zealand.