CRIMINAL JUSTICE (TEMPORARY PROVISIONS) (AMENDMENT) BILL

Order for Second Reading read.

The Chief Secretary (Mr W. A. C. Goode): Sir, I move, "That the Bill be now read a Second time."

This, Sir, is another Bill to strengthen the law against gangsters. As Members of the House are probably aware, the Criminal Justice (Temporary Provisions) Ordinance was enacted last year for the special purpose of dealing with secret societies and gangsters, and its main provisions were that when a member of a secret society or a person connected with a secret society has been convicted of one of the offences listed in the First Schedule, then the courts may sentence him either to corrective training or to preventive detention, taking into account the age and possibilities of reforming the person concerned or the need to prevent him from continuing to be a menace to his fellow citizens.

The Schedule to the Ordinance lists the offences for which those sentences can be imposed by the courts, but it omits from that list the offence of criminal intimidation under section 506 of the Penal Code. This is a patent omission in dealing with secret societies because intimidation is the primary activity and, indeed, the lifeblood of the secret societies. They depend for their existence, for their funds, on getting money by extortion or by protection money exacted from taxi-drivers, stall-holders, hawkers and all sorts of other people. The members of secret societies threaten those persons with injury to themselves or to their property unless the money is paid over, and that, of course, is precisely the meaning of "criminal intimidation". So this Bill is introduced, Sir, to include criminal intimidation in the Schedule to the Criminal Justice (Temporary Provisions) Ordinance.

The opportunity has also been taken to make a small correction in the Bill to bring it up to date. Paragraph (g) of the First Schedule refers to two Emergency regulations which were in force when the Bill was enacted. The Emergency Regulations have now lapsed and this amending Bill substitutes a reference to section 7 of the Criminal Law (Temporary Provisions) Ordinance which has replaced Emergency Regulation 4, and thereby brings the Ordinance up to date with the law as it now is. Sir, I beg to move.

Question put, and agreed to.

Bill accordingly read a Second time.