ENG-1956 — Page 223

178

HONG KONG ANNUAL REPORT

modifications being to extend the grounds for divorce to include desertion for a period of three years, cruelty and unsoundness of mind requiring the patient to be under care and treatment for five years.

Police Supervision and Probation of Offenders. The Police Supervision Ordinance, No. 12, and the Probation of Offenders Ordinance, No. 57, together constitute a marked modification of the Colony's laws relating to prevention of crime. The population of the Colony having vastly increased in recent years, the legislation dealing with this subject was proving inadequate. The Police Supervision Ordinance repeals and replaces the old Police Supervision Ordinance (Chapter 224). The new Ordinance extends the class of persons over whom a close eye may be kept and renders the system of supervision much more flexible and effective, so that an order of Police Supervision is a thing to be reckoned with by the person against whom it is made in that it is more stringent and no longer an easy matter to evade. The Probation of Offenders Ordinance, on the other hand, extends the probation system provided under the Juvenile Offenders Ordinance (Chapter 226), to include adults, thereby giving the courts the opportunity of placing an adult offender, who is not yet a hardened criminal, under the care of a trained probation officer with the object of reforming his character while there is yet time.

Adoption. While adoption by Chinese law and custom, which forms part of the common law of the Colony, has always been possible, the need for comprehensive legislation to provide a standard method of bringing into the life of a family a child who is not the natural child of the adopter has long been felt in the Colony, as indeed, elsewhere. The Adoption Ordinance, No. 22, which was, one might say 'at last', enacted, does not seek to interfere with the validity of adoptions made in accordance with the various customary Chinese methods employed, but stands supplementary to them. To some extent the Ordinance is based upon the