NOTHING TO BE WRITTEN IN THIS MARGIN
W(B)L 51-7406
CONFIDENTIAL
HKR 14/31
HKK 18/12
hara 19 420
Singapore
Crime
1
17. Mr. Stewart asked whether crime was on the increase
in Hong Kong as elsewhere. Mr. Sutcliffe said it was,
particularly petty thuggery by young men. But the
Colony had a very high detection rate, probably the
highest in the world: nearly 70% of all crime and
50% of professional crime.
18. Mr. Stewart asked about prisons.
said that the Colony had an advanced prisonsystem.
Sir David Trench
Much
Only
of the reafforestation work was done by prisoners. a maximum security prison; the this were open prisons one of the Colony's prisons was
recidivism
In answer to a
question about the resividiem Mr. Sutcliffe said it was
too early to say how many of the young first offenders
who had now been given two or three years for thuggery
would turn out. There had been success in keeping
very young first offenders out of crime. Mr. Roberts
said that the figures were distored by the drug
offenders going back to prison again and again.
Local Government
getting
19. Mr. Stewart asked about the problem of Keeping
peopleinterested in local government. Was he right in
the pressing lack of interest was,
Subject
concem
saying that 'this/because the two main sources of interest
in the V.K.
in local government, housing and education, were not
matters for local government here? Mr. Holmes said
poking that local government did have influence on the housing
in Hong Kong. The Colony did not have local government
district by district; there was an Urban Council covering
the whole area, excluding the New Territories. The
lack of interest in elections was mainly due to the fact
that the election system was not understood in Chinese
society.
The Chinese had only had a brief experience of from 1911 until the perica such a system when the Communists took over: a disasterous
period, even by Chinese standards.
29. When asked what sort of people were dected,
Sir David Trench said that they were lawyers, teachers,
/business