刑事檢控科各律師/高級律政 - Department of Justice

9
CA 200/2000
Leong, Wong &
Keith JJA
(5.9.2000)
*Sin Pui-ha &
Tam Sze-lok
#Michael Lunn
SC & Freddy
Woon (A1)
A2 I/P
(1) CHEUNG
Chi-wai
(2) FUNG
Hiu-chong
Result - Application dismissed.
Training centre/Whether community service order appropriate
alternative for grave offence/Comments on suitability of
pregnant offender for training centre
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The Applicants were convicted after trial of offences of blackmail
and theft. As they were aged, respectively, 19 years and 17 years, the
judge called for pre-sentencing reports. They were subsequently
sentenced to detention in a training centre.
It was the case for the prosecution that the Applicants had been
engaged in an unpleasant scheme to exploit the vulnerability of those
who engaged the services of prostitutes. When a client requested the
services of a prostitute, she would visit his home or hotel room and
demand payment of a sum greater than had been agreed for her
services. The client would be threatened with violence if he refused to
pay. Those threats would be made over the telephone or by a man in
the street when the client went to a cash dispenser to obtain the money
demanded. The Applicants were each involved in such a scheme on
two occasions.
The judge took the view that the offences committed by the
Applicants were so serious that despite their age they had to receive
custodial sentences. However, by ordering their detention in the
training centre he apparently concluded, in the light of the language of s
4(1) of the Training Centres Ordinance, Cap 280, that it was expedient
for their reformation and for the prevention of crime that they should
undergo a period of training in a training centre.
A1 submitted that the judge was in error in not having considered
a community service order as an alternative to a custodial sentence.
The judge was said to have fallen into the same error as had the judge
in HKSAR v Chow Tak-man [1999] 2 HKC 659, who was said, at
663, ‘not to have addressed the particular matter and to have
regarded himself as simply precluded from imposing a community
service upon the basis [that] burglary was a serious offence and
that a custodial sentence was inevitable’.
A2 submitted that she came from a stable working-class, and
that she got into the wrong crowd after failing to achieve at secondary
school. As she was also four months’ pregnant, the pre-sentence
assessment panel officer at the institution at which she was held pending