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13 Medico-Legal & Criminological Rev. 1 (1945)

handle is hein.journals/medlgjr13 and id is 1 raw text is: THE MEDICO-LEGAL AND CRIMINOLOGICAL REVIEW Vol. XIII. January-March, 1945 No. I COMMON GROUND Under this heading the Editors comment on matters of interest to both professions. The views expressed are not necessarily those of the Society. CRIME, SENESCENCE AND SENILITY JUVENILE delinquency is a major war-time problem which is under constant dis- cussion from every point of view, but delinquency in the closing years of life has hitherto been insufficiently studied. Whilst the economic aspects of old age as they are likely to affect the life of the community in this country and the United States of America have been dealt with at length, there has until recently been no general survey of the problems of senescence and senility in relation to crime. Hence the article contributed by Dr. Norwood East to the Journal of Mental Science (1944, 90, 835) has a special value because of the statistical data it embodies and the suggestions it makes. The growing increase in the proportion of old persons to the rest of the community, as indicated by statistical computations (cf. Professor Bowley, The Times, February 25th, 1944), shows that the subject is of practical and not merely theoretical importance. The desirability of not having elderly magistrates in the juvenile courts has recently been stressed in several quarters, and Dr. East also suggests that the trial of aged persons by their contemporaries may be equally unsatisfactory, although, on the other hand, young magistrates may have but little knowledge of the emotional and mental difficulties of the old. The magnitude of the problem of crime in relation to old age is shown in the Criminal Statistics. During the ten years from 1929 to 1938 there were 13,957 persons over sixty convicted of indictable offences; of these, 11,430 were males. Of 569,509 convicted of acquisitive offences 11,313 were 6o or over; as were also 1298 of the 17,437 convicted of sexual offences, and 1042 of the 17,132 convicted of aggressive offences. In the first of these classes house-breaking was more frequent than shop-breaking among the over-sixties, which is possibly attributable to decrease of audacity with age. In the sexual group of offences bigamy was relatively less frequent among those over than under sixty, as was to be expected. Indecent assaults on girls under 16 came in the same order of frequency in both age groups, but attempts on males under 16 were relatively more frequent in those above than in those below sixty; this may point to a regression to an earlier stage of sexual development. In the aggressive type of offences attempts at suicide occupied the first position (554 of 5449), and of the murders and attempts to murder, 20 of the total

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