10
Public Order
102
石
THE maintenance of law and order continued to be the bedrock on which the well-being, confidence and continued prosperity of the busy, packed, community of Hong Kong rests. The responsibility falls primarily on the Royal Hong Kong Police Force and, in an associated sphere, the Independent Commission Against Corruption. Behind them stand the Correctional Services Department, the new title given during the year to the Prisons Department so as better to reflect its contemporary role in society. And, concerned also with the safety and welfare of a community in which fires and drug smuggling are all too common, are the Fire Services Department and the Customs and Excise Service. In the widespread flooding, with some loss of life, which followed the abnormally heavy rains during the summer, the Fire Services and the Police Force, backed by the Auxiliary Services, did much by way of immediate help to mitigate the worst effects.
The threat to the territory's future well-being posed in the past by the flood of illegal immigrants from China continued to be kept in check by the vigilance of the security forces operating by land, sea and air and strengthened operationally during the year by an additional Gurkha battalion. But Hong Kong, alone among all the countries in Southeast Asia, was the one destination to which refugees from Vietnam kept on coming in the same numbers as in 1980 and 1981 not least because it was a place where they could find work and live near-normal lives while awaiting resettlement elsewhere. During the year, the resettlement countries were showing increasing reluctance to accept refugees: the numbers arriving in Hong Kong were greater than those leaving and, for the first time since 1979, the resident refugee population in Hong Kong began to grow. In a move to discourage further arrivals, most of whom were now coming for economic reasons rather than to escape persecution, the government gave notice that in future all those arriving in Hong Kong would be confined in camps and debarred from outside employment. By the end of the year there were 8 869 refugees in open camps and 3 747 in closed institutions.
Police Force
In 1982 the Royal Hong Kong Police Force embarked on a major restructuring and reorganisation exercise aimed at providing commanders on the ground with greater autonomy in making decisions on operational and management matters. As part of the exercise, the four police districts of Hong Kong Island, Kowloon, New Territories and Marine were retitled regions, while the majority of divisions within the regions were upgraded to districts, and former sub-divisions renamed divisions. Certain posts were regraded, and additional supporting staff provided, to enable district commanders to deal more effectively with local policing problems.
The first two phases of the reorganisation programme, which covered all urban areas on Hong Kong Island and in Kowloon and the Frontier District in the New Territories,