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9. If and when a new gaol is built, the Treasurer should be required to consider and advise on the financial aspect of gaol printing. In the Commissioners view this aspect of the question has never yet been adequately considered by Government. This view, they are of the opinion, is borne out by the so called financial arguments put forward by Government to Legislative Council on 23rd September, 1929, (vide Hansard 1929 pages 240-245), in support of the proposal to erect a reinforced concrete printing shop in a prison, which obviously should be shortly torn down. Printing unlike other prison industries requires an European technical supervisory staff (there are five such posts at Victoria gaol), and expensive machinery.
10. Reduction in the prison population is desirable from many points of view, including that of effecting an economy in the running of the Prison Department. The Commissioners consider that a not inconsiderable reduction could be effected, if the Police were to devote less time than they do at present to the arrest, detention, and charging of offenders of such petty "crimes" as crying out wares in crowded streets (where pandemonium already reigns), and touting for motor cars; provided that a real public nuisance is not being committed. The sentences imposed on such persons are trivial, a few days at most, but whether it be one day or one year, the prisoner has to be entered on the prison records, washed, given a suit of prison clothes, etc., all of which takes up the time of more than one officer. Then again an extension of the system of binding over by Magistrates in the case of first offenders might also relieve the prison, without leading to any increase in crime. There appears to be no pro- vision in the Magistrates' or any other ordinance to require a person who has been bound over on first conviction to report himself to the police at stated intervals. insertion of such a provision might incline the Magistrates to use this power of binding over more frequently than they do at present. The two suggestions made in this para- graph should be considered by the Inspector General of Police and the law officers of the Crown concerned. Habitual offenders should be treated as such and either receive longer terms of imprisonment, thus saving the expense and trouble of repeated readmission into gaol, or be banished. Banishment procedure should in any case accelerated.
The
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COLONIAL SECRETARY'S OFFICE.
The staff of this office has grown enormously within the last ten years. This may to some extent be accounted for by the increased activities of the local Government resultant on the political awakening of China, and the stream of missions and enquiries sent out by the League of Nations. But even after making full allowance for this, the Commissioners consider that much can and should be effected in the way of retrench- ment by re-organization. Despite its large staff more overtime is worked in this office than probably in any other Government department. Without re-organization therefore no reduction will be possible. It must be re-organization not only of the internal working of the Office but of the division of the work of Government between the Secretariat and the departments.
2. The fault may be summed up briefly as "over-centralization". The amount of trivial matters (which cannot be of interest to the Colonial Secretary's Office), that come to it from departments is amazing. Possibly each of them occupies only a minute or two of the time of the Assistant Colonial Secretaries, but on the other hand it means a considerable amount of work for the clerical staff,-making up the file, card indexing it, entry into a register every time it comes in or goes out of the office. Multiply this several times, and it will readily be understood why there is such a large clerical staff. There are in addition many matters not of a trivial nature which are dealt with by the Secretariat, but which should really be dealt with in toto by the head of the department concerned. The Commissioners would stress again the point that they made in their report on the Public Works Department that heads of departments all appeared to the Commissioners to be anxious and willing to accept full responsibility for the running of their departments, but the Colonial Secretary's Office apparently will not let them have it.
3. Having diagnosed the malady it is necessary to prescribe the cure. Firstly, heads of departments should be permitted to incur expenditure on all ordinary items of a uniform kind which have been approved by Legislative Council, without having to obtain prior authority from the Secretariat. The Treasurer always keeps a watchful