ought to appear 'open'. The balance of emphasis required unusual understanding and co-operation on the part of the staff. Over a hundred and seventy new juveniles were admitted, and reports were submitted to juvenile courts on every boy who had been remanded for inquiries. These reports are based on close observation of the boys by supervisors responsible for them. They give information about their response to treatment in the Home and behaviour generally, and they make a valuable addition to the probation officers' reports. Begonia Road Boys' Home has to accept a markedly growing number of physically and mentally handicapped juveniles. The work grows yearly more difficult. 39 Ma Tau Wai Girls' Home caters for smaller numbers than the Boys' Home, and serves a larger combination of purposes. It is a place of detention for arrested girls awaiting appearance in court, and is also a 'place of refuge' for girls with behaviour problems though not neces- sarily guilty of criminal offences. Delinquency may be a symptom of some more general trouble, and this is an experiment in providing treat- ment for young persons as well as juveniles, for whom neither prison nor probation nor any other statutory form of correction is appropriate or adequate. The sexes are distinguished not only by the smaller pro- portion of women and girls taken in crime but also by the fact that to the female a moral problem and a delinquent one are often indis- tinguishable. Consequently although the two homes have a common purpose of rehabilitation their methods differ. Ma Tau Wai Girls' Home provides classroom teaching and informal activities, but among girls more reliance must be placed on individual casework than on group therapy, which nevertheless has a part to play in remedial treatment.
VOLUNTARY WORK
40 Officers in the Probation Section, as in others, have continued to play an active part in helping the work of voluntary societies, mainly through acting as advisers or observers on their committees. As in all these departmental relationships, the closeness of contact and level of help and advice must vary from one to the other and from year to year. The Society of Boys' Centres gives a helping hand to about a hundred and forty poor boys between 8 and 16 years of age. Half of these actually live in at the centre in Shing Tak Street. They are boys whose home conditions are such that they are in danger of forming anti-social habits. The object of the society is to encourage self-responsibility, self-help, self-respect and the acquisition of sufficient knowledge and skill to earn an honest living which as a boy achieves manhood will
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