“The Criminal Sexual Psychopath in Canada: Sex, Psychiatry and the Law at Mid-Century”

In 1948, Canadian parliamentarians unanimously voted in favour of adopting criminal sexual psychopath legislation. An American invention that combined the force of the law with the curative abilities of psychiatry, sexual psychopath laws were the product of faith in science, and especially “mental health,” to solve social problems, combined with growing public anxiety about violent sexual assault, particularly against children. This mid-century medico-legal experiment has been well documented by American historians. Here, the Canadian response to the problem of “sexual deviancy” is examined, with particular reference to the Committee on the Sex Offender whose findings are representative of the range of “expert” opinion on this issue. Though the law itself was widely regarded as a failure, psychiatrists and other experts successfully claimed medical authority over certain types of sex offences, and popularized medical interpretations of sexual behaviour, including the pathologization of homosexuality.