26 The Hong Kong Sea School is a well-established and popular local establishment which trains boys, mainly chosen because of their needy circumstances, for a career at sea. Boys who have finished their training have at present no difficulty in finding employment, as the demand from shipping firms for properly trained young seamen remains high; about eighty former pupils are now serving as ships' second mates and third mates. There were five hundred boys in residence at the school at the end of the year, the maximum capacity being five hundred and fifty.
27 Youth work is like many well-advertised commodities. It has an appeal for the young of all ages, from 8 to 80, and if it is best for the professional workers to be young, the volunteer helpers may be of any age.
CHAPTER IV
PROBATION AND JUVENILE CORRECTION
A good person can put himself in the place of a bad person more easily than a bad person can put himself in the place of a good person.
JEAN PAUL RICHTER
28 It is a remarkable fact that many people who ought to know better still regard a probation order as 'letting him off lightly'. This does not however dishearten the Social Welfare Department, which knows that the work of what is at present inadequately known as the Probation Section is an indispensable ingredient of the treatment of crime, in which it is the full partner of the judiciary, the police force and the prisons. As social workers its officers, although concerned pri- marily with social inquiries into the lives of accused persons, with super- vision of the convicted in their homes, hostels or institutions, 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. The Principal Probation Officer for example sat on the inter-depart- mental working party set up in 1964 to advise the Governor in Council
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