[vi]
(xii) The Committee fear that the unique consequences of the juxtaposition of this Colony to the mainland of China and the Province of Kwang Tung are
not always present to the minds of those responsible for regulating the criminal population in our midst.
One consequence alluded to is this, that Hongkong is the resort of Chinese fleeing from justice as administered in China-the authors of pira- cies and armed robberies who do not scruple to repeat their crimes within British jurisdiction and constitute a leaven full of active permeating evil qualities. If to this is added the presence of numerous clans speaking different dialects and ready to defend an injury to one of their numbers by armed force, it is palpable that there are elements of danger and dis- order rife in this Colony which are probably without parallel elsewhere. Suppose that England herself were on the very borders of a country unable to control its wilder spirits and inhabited by segregated clans of varying forms of speech, and that her population consisted for the most part of an overflow of the people from the adjoining country, the regulation and punishment of such alien incursionists would take some abnormal form. And if the imprisoned portion of this alien body had been convicted of offences attended with violence, or, when in gaol, refused obedi- ence to the regulations intended to make their incarceration a deterrent from crime, we venture to say that there would be no hesitation in resorting to the only form of punishinent, viz., flogging, which would be efficacious, and that the power of ordering this punish- ment would be entrusted to a limited extent to the head officer when he is made responsible for the maintenance of strict discipline, when swift punishment is the most respected and when the invocation of other counsels is for certain reasons a hardship on the consulted.
We press upon the Government our views in this regard, and trust that no action will be taken to introduce here a system prevalent else- where simply because this is a British Colony and without very careful regard to the local circumstances of the Colony.
SUGGESTIONS AND OBSERVATIONS.
8. To sum up, the Committee are of opinion-
(i) That the hospital accommodation is grossly inadequate (see Appendix VIII. as to dimensions of wards), that the hospital attendants are not suited by training for their duties and that their hours of duty are excessive;
(ii) That flogging in the Gaol should under no pretence be dispensed with, and that, in particular, the withdrawal from the Superintendent of his present power of ordering corporal punishment is to be strongly deprecated;
(iii) That a birch might be substituted for the rattan in the case of floggings ordered by the Superintendent, but that the rattan should not be abolished in other cases, it being left to the discretion of the Judges, Magistrates and the Superintendent acting in concert with a Visiting Justice, to decide whether the rattan or the birch should, with the sanction of the Medical Officer, be used in any given case;
(iv) That the number of strokes with a rattan should not exceed twenty at one
time in any case;
(v) That a system which would admit of the ordering of more floggings and fewer strokes is preferable to the present system which admits-in most cases of only one flogging with a large number of strokes;