CONFIDENTIAL
7.
this latter point, if it can be provided, would be welcome.
13.
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There is, however, a special complication over juveniles and young persons. The position with them is quite different because the Courts are bound to observe the provisions of Section 109A of the Criminal Procedure Ordinance which in effect forbids a court to sentence a person under 21 to imprisonment unless it is satisfied that no other method of dealing with him is appropriate. In other words the courts are obliged rather to consider the treatment of the individual than to make the punishment fit the crime let alone to take into account the prevalence of criminal activity by others. There may therefore be something to be said for the introduction of an amendment to this section which would enable any provision for minimum sentences to be applied not only to those over the age of 21 but also to those below that age. We should, of course, still wish to ensure that if young offenders were sentenced to imprisonment they were not going to be incarcerated with hardened criminals, and the provision of separate secure institutions, as distinct from the present open training centres, may be a pre-requisite and are indeed already contemplated.
14.
We shall now be examining the relative merits of these proposals as a matter of some urgency and I thought that you should be forewarned of this. If there are any points that you would wish us to take into account I would be grateful to have them as soon as possible.
15.
Two final points. You may be thinking that we are getting rather unnecessarily agitated over this problem when our crime rate is still considerably lower than in most comparable cities, and our detection rate considerably higher. But what is so concerning people