prison. It should not be forgotten-as it frequently is--that probation officers deal with women and girls and grown-up men, as well as the so-called 'juvenile delinquents', and that these latter are not just naughty boys: manslaughter, wounding, pocket-picking and the like are not trivial matters, but they are among the many reasons for boys having been placed on probation at the present moment.
36. The Probation Committees for Hong Kong Island and for Kowloon and the New Territories each met twice during the year to consider reports on 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, 1956.
CORRECTIONAL INSTITUTIONS
37. The juvenile correctional institutions consisted in the recent past of a remand home in Kowloon and a reformatory school (run on the lines of an approved school in Britain) at Castle Peak, in the New Terri- tories. But in April a new combined institution, remand home and proba- tion home under one roof and administration, designed to accommodate a hundred and sixty boys, was opened at Yau Yat Chuen by the Chief Justice, Sir Michael HOGAN. It then became possible to adapt the building previously used as a remand home for use as a girls' combined remand and probation home; this was opened in December and is known as the Ma Tau Wei Girls' Home. Although there may be fewer girls than boys whom the courts judge to be in need of residential training, this Home now provides a positive half-way alternative to the extremes of either a bare probation order, which may be ineffective if it has no conditions of residence and training attached, or the comparative rigours of imprisonment. Working drawings are now being produced for the additional probation hostel which is to be built at Kwun Tong for young offenders aged between 16 and 21, and a second reformatory school is also entering the planning stage: this school is increasingly needed to meet the growing demand for reformatory treatment.
38. The Castle Peak Boys' Home has a hundred and fifty places, but the expansion of the last few years has severely cut down the accommoda- tion available for trade training, which is now cramped and inadequate in relation to its importance; plans are going forward for a new trade training block, where the revised and more effective instruction that is now imparted to the boys will have a better chance to make its full impact.
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