Social_Welfare_Annual_Report_1964-1965 — Page 21

CHAPTER IV

PROBATION AND JUVENILE CORRECTION

33. The work of what is known compendiously as the Probation Section of the Social Welfare Department is a vital and increasingly conspicuous component of the Government's programme for the preven- tion or treatment of crime and delinquency, in which it is a junior but indispensable partner of the Judiciary, the Police Force and the Prisons Department. As social workers its officers, although basically concerned only with social inquiries into the lives of accused persons, with super- vision of the convicted and with some 'pre-delinquent' activities of juveniles, nevertheless find themselves frequently on the twilight fringe between social welfare and the other social services (education, housing, health and employment) which affect the incidence of criminal behaviour on the one hand, and the sciences of criminology and penology on the other. They find themselves called upon to offer advice and critical thoughts not only upon individuals' behaviour and welfare but also on other bodies' attitude to correction. In this area the Principal Probation Officer found himself speaking for his department and service on two important occasions-the seminar on drug addiction sponsored at the end of October by the Hong Kong Discharged Prisoners' Aid Society (with the participation of other member-organizations of the Hong Kong Council of Social Service and all the Government departments concerned), and the interdepartmental working party set up to advise the Governor in Council on the adequacy of the law in relation to crimes of violence committed by young persons, which met during December and January.

34. Every study of these problems in the round has its appendix of statistics. However these are no substitutes for scientific analysis and logical deduction. This is however merely one facet of a much larger problem that confronts the Social Welfare Department as a whole, the lack of dispassionate and thorough-going research conducted in sufficient depth to ferret out the facts on all social questions. Resources to under- take such investigations are not lacking and non-governmental bodies from time to time publish various findings on a limited scale, but few Government officers can spare time from urgent everyday attention to grinding routine and to the needs of individual human beings who look to them for help. Meanwhile sensational headlines continue to appear in the press, usually after a hasty reading of the official quarterly figures which show the business transacted by the courts and the police; but

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