HIK 14/38 CONFIDENTIAL
25
Foreign and Commonwealth Office
London S.W.1
7 January 1971
I am sorry that it has taken us so long to let you have our views on the various points raised in your letter to me of 6 August 1970 about the upward trend in violent crime in Hong Kong.
2.
We agree that the figures are disturbing, but the pattern is the same in many other places and is, I am afraid, symptomatic of the times in which we live. The impact on Hong Kong is no doubt more sharply felt because of the high population density, but you are fortunate in having an efficient police force to cope with the situation and to maintain such a high detection rate of reported crime.
3. We have attempted to seek comparisons between the situation in Hong Kong and that obtaining elsewhere but have been warned that such comparisons tend to be misleading since so many local factors affect the issue. For instance, there is wide variation from one place to another in definitions of what constitutes a crime or a particular kind of crime. Again, there are differences in public attitudes towards the reporting of offences as well as in police recording practice and in the methods used for collecting and compiling statistics. However, you may be interested to have, for what they are worth to you, the enclosed figures of certain indictable offences known to the police in Birmingham (the estimated population of which in June 1969 was put at 1,084,230).
4.
We have already sent you information about the effectiveness of detention centres in Britain so I need not go into that aspect o the matter any further at this stage. For the rest, you touched on a number of issues capital punishment, corporal punishment, deportation and detention and mandatory minimum sentences.
Of thes
I think that only the last two call for comment since I understand that the Courts in Hong Kong already have the necessary powers in respect of capital and corporal punishment and that there is no intention to introduce new legislation on the subject: in the circumstances it would appear to be up to the Courts to determine the extent to which these particular measures should be used.
5. As regards deportation and detention, Denys Roberts has sent us a draft Immigration and Deportation Bill which we are now study- ing in detail. We have noted from the explanatory memorandum accompanying the Bill that the proposed legislation is designed, /amongst
His Excellency
Sir David Trench, G.C.M.G., M.C.,
Government House,
Hong Kone
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