This is not so. They also have to deal with women and girls (women officers are used for this work) and with adult males.
42. The number of posts provided for probation work (as distinct from work in correctional institutions) was 46 at the end of the year, but the Probation Service was below establishment due in part to resignations and in part to difficulties in recruiting male officers. There are also always a few away on in-service or university training courses. The number of officers actually available and gazetted averaged 35 and those officers were responsible for the supervision of an active caseload of 1,835 probationers and others during the period. Detailed figures are given in Appendix 7. Those figures represent heavy individual case- loads. The technical 'success' rate, that is to say the number of those who completed their periods of probation without further offence, is now 64.5 per cent, compared with about two out of three in the early 1960s. Most of the failures were subsequently sentenced to further reformatory school training or to prison if they belonged to the older age-group.
43. The working party on juvenile courts was convened by the Chief Justice on 9 February 1968 and among its recommendations was the establishment of a permanent Juvenile Magistrate who would in future take over all the juvenile courts in Hong Kong, Kowloon and the New Territories, replacing magistrates who used to sit in juvenile courts on an ad hoc basis and JP juvenile courts. This recommenda- tion was implemented in February 1969 with the appointment of a permanent Juvenile Magistrate. Since this appointment, juvenile proba- tion cases were no longer referred to the Probation Committees; instead the Juvenile Magistrate discussed these cases on a monthly basis with Probation Officers at which meetings the Principal Probation Officer was also present.
44. The Probation Committees for Hong Kong Island and for Kowloon and the New Territories each met twice during the year to consider reports on selected cases prepared by probation officers and to advise on matters referred to them by the Principal Probation Officer under rule 14 of the Probation of Offenders Rules, Cap 298.
CORRECTIONAL INSTITUTIONS
45. The juvenile correctional institutions consist of a reformatory. school (run on the lines of an approved school in Britain) at Castle Peak in the New Territories; a combined institution (remand home
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