LAW, ORDER AND RECORDS
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year to study the organization and methods of police forces in those countries. In return, 35 officers from Police Forces in Malaya, Somalia, Vietnam, Burma, North Borneo, Thailand, Egypt, Cambodia, the United States of America, Canada, Australia and Macau were given the opportunity to study various aspects of police work in Hong Kong.
THE HONG KONG AUXILIARY POLICE FORCE
The Commissioner of Police commands the Hong Kong Auxiliary Police and is assisted by a Commandant who is the senior Auxiliary Police Officer. The Force has an establishment of 35 Gazetted Officers, 124 Inspectors and 1,817 Non-Commissioned Officers and Police Constables. The purpose of this formation is to assist the regular Police to maintain or restore peace and order should a civil disturbance break out or threaten. When mobilized the Auxiliary Police Force is fully integrated with the regular Police Force and its members have attained a high standard of efficiency.
Nine training camps, each of eleven days, were held at the Police Training School for a total of 1,467 Auxiliary Police Officers. These camps are the most important part of Auxiliary Police training, but there were also two annual mobilizations, each of 16 hours duration, comprising joint exercises with the military forces.
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PRISONS
The staff of the Prisons Department includes, besides 16 gazetted officers and 740 other ranks, 164 others, such as school-masters, social welfare officers, trade instructors, clerks and mechanics.
For the last seven years the Department has had a steady policy of decentralization from the overcrowded maximum-security prison at Stanley. Ultimately all prisoners serving sentences of two years or less will be in open prisons, and of a total population of 5,867, 1,625 are already in open conditions. This is, so far as is known, a unique experiment and a bold attempt to solve the universal problem of short-term imprisonment. A new prison, for which the preliminary plans were drawn up this year, will take another 1,000 prisoners out to Lantau Island, where their main task will be to