TNAG-0278-FCO40-314-Visit-of-Secretary-of-State-for-Foreign-and-Commonwealth-Aff-1970 — Page 73

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CONFIDENTIAL

HKR 14/31

HKK 18/12

hara 19 420

Singapore

Crime

1

17. Mr. Stewart asked whether crime was on the increase

in Hong Kong as elsewhere. Mr. Sutcliffe said it was,

particularly petty thuggery by young men. But the

Colony had a very high detection rate, probably the

highest in the world: nearly 70% of all crime and

50% of professional crime.

18. Mr. Stewart asked about prisons.

said that the Colony had an advanced prisonsystem.

Sir David Trench

Much

Only

of the reafforestation work was done by prisoners. a maximum security prison; the this were open prisons one of the Colony's prisons was

recidivism

In answer to a

question about the resividiem Mr. Sutcliffe said it was

too early to say how many of the young first offenders

who had now been given two or three years for thuggery

would turn out. There had been success in keeping

very young first offenders out of crime. Mr. Roberts

said that the figures were distored by the drug

offenders going back to prison again and again.

Local Government

getting

19. Mr. Stewart asked about the problem of Keeping

peopleinterested in local government. Was he right in

the pressing lack of interest was,

Subject

concem

saying that 'this/because the two main sources of interest

in the V.K.

in local government, housing and education, were not

matters for local government here? Mr. Holmes said

poking that local government did have influence on the housing

in Hong Kong. The Colony did not have local government

district by district; there was an Urban Council covering

the whole area, excluding the New Territories. The

lack of interest in elections was mainly due to the fact

that the election system was not understood in Chinese

society.

The Chinese had only had a brief experience of from 1911 until the perica such a system when the Communists took over: a disasterous

period, even by Chinese standards.

29. When asked what sort of people were dected,

Sir David Trench said that they were lawyers, teachers,

/business