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In the evening a conversazione was given by the local committee in the Corporation Buildings,The Congress was brought to a conclusion on Wednesday. The address of Mr. G. W. Hastings, president of the crime section, was well attended. His subject was “ Crime, and the Criminal Class,’9 -and, like most of those who are conversant with this subject, he regards our criminals as belonging physically, as well as morally, to a lower type of humanity. In his own qounty of Worcester, the average height of 6000 prisoners was not more than 5 feet 4 inches, and the average weight about nine stone. This is considerably below the average of the United Kingdom, and seems to indicate that, both in body and mind, the habitual criminal class are a distinctly inferior race, who have been elbowed out of the ordinary paths of prosperity and honesty by those stronger and better nurtured than themselves.It is a fact that the most notorious haunts of crime in London are chiefly on the sites of the old sanctuaries where crime of old was protected, and on these spots criminals have lived and bred in and in, perpetuating an hereditary aptitude for vice. A great deal of information, Mr. Hastings stated, had been collected on this subject, and it all led to the belief that there was *a peculiar physical and mental depravity in the majority of the criminal classes; they were a species by themselves, and though they did assimilate people from without these were comparatively few in number. The crimintcolony in large towns is the centre in which crime is propagated and nursed. The questions discussed oy Mr. Hastings were—how i« this class to be adequately dealt with? how is crime to be kept to the minimum? how is it to be detected ? and how is it to be punished ? He advocated the appointment of a public prosecutor as a step towards the more efficient administration of justice. Mr. Hastings expressed an an opinion that the report of the Judicature Commission held out fair hopes that this great improvement in our criminal procedure would soon be carried out. At the same time he did not assent to the proposal of the commission that the clerks to the justices should be appointed public prosecutors, nor to that of Lord Chief Justice Cockbum, that the country should be mapped out into divisions, under the care of Government officers. As a further amendment of the law, he thought a prisoner ought to be allowed to give evidence in his own behalf.
Newspaper Details
Iron
London, Middlesex, GB
Sat, Oct 10, 1874
Page 3
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CA 11 Dec 2020
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