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Mr Wilford
CONFIDENTIAL
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MW
CRIME AND PUNISHMENT IN HONG KONG
1. Mr Lloyd has sent us some useful comments in his letter
of 22 March.
2.
It seems that our encouragement to the Hong Kong Secretariat
to consult us at the formative stage of policy is beginning to
show results. The advance news of the community campaign against
crime and recruitment to the Auxiliary Police is particularly
useful.
3. Most of the proposed legislative changes do not, I think,
call for comment from us at this stage. The proposed new maximum
sentencing powers for the magistrates are compatible with the
powers of similar courts elsewhere, including the magistrates'
courts in Uganda with which I was associated and which were much
less sophisticated than those in Hong Kong. I think, however,
that we should take every suitable opportunity to point the need
for better magistrates for Hong Kong.
4. The only point on which substantive comment might be called
for is the question of mandatory sentences for young persons.
I think there is anyway some confusion of thought in that despite
Section 11 (2) of the Juvenile Offenders Ordinance the range of
possible sentences laid down in the amended Public Order Ordinance
would seem to be definitive. I also think we could be in for
trouble in the UK if a magistrate in Hong Kong sentenced a
fourteen year old to imprisonment for carrying, say, a knuckle-
duster, and then claimed that the deliberate exclusion of the
Juvenile Offenders Ordinance meant that he had no alternative
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