Subcommittee on Police's Handling of Sex Workers and Searches of
Detainees under Panel of Security has already held their 6th meeting on
the 24th June 2009. Our colleague Connie and two intern students have also
sat in the meeting, and summarized the meeting as follows:

1) The average number of searches per month
Police stated in the meeting that the average number of searches on
detainees per month is 2500. The custody search form, which meant to be
given to the detainees before the searches, is to notify the procedures
and reasons of conducting searches and is currently printed in 15
languages

The number of cases involving the level III searches (strip-searches) is
gradually falling in the past six months, in which 90% of the cases were
offences related to drugs. The police explained it was because of the
strengthening on the monitoring, to avoid the abuse of search procedures
from the police officers.

However, Legislative Councillor Emily LAU Wai-hing said continuous
monitoring on figures of July to September is needed to make the
conclusion.

2) Consideration about amending or loosening the laws
Responding to complaints against anti-vice undercover operation which
involved police officers inducing two sex workers to provide services at
the same, the Police have revealed some statistical figures in the
meeting. In 2008, there were 13,352 anti-vice operations in total, wherein
1,186 of them were undercover operations. Among those undercover
operations, 868 of them were successfully arrested and 318 cases resulted
in failure of arrestment. In cases successfully arrested, 318 of them
involved orgnaised crime.

Legislative Councillor Albert HO Chun-yan said that the numbers did not
reflect the reality. For example he had doubt about the actual meaning of
“Organised crime”. Two sex workers might choose to work together for
personal safety. Would it be necessary for the government to amend some of
the laws? HO suggested the Subcommittee to include consideration about
amending or loosening the laws before submitting the report.

President of the Subcommittee, Legislative Councillor James TO Kun-sun
agreed, and pointed out the loosening of inferior criminal offenses
against sex workers should be considered.