HKSAR v. LI WAI PING

DCCC 38/2013

IN THE DISTRICT COURT OF THE

HONG KONG SPECIAL ADMINISTRATIVE REGION

CRIMINAL CASE NO 38 OF 2013

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Reasons for Sentence

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1. Li Wai-ping, you have been convicted on your own plea of the offence of burglary.

2. The victim of the burglary was your employer, an electrical appliance shop in Kwun Tong, from where you stole $11,500.

3. The burglary occurred on 27 July last year.  On that day, you had been employed by the victim company for just over a month.

4. The shop closed for business at 7.30 pm. Shortly after the shop closed, a member of the staff put $26,000 in a bag in the shop’s safe.

5. You had left the shop at the end of the working day, but a few minutes after leaving, you returned to the shop, using a key to the shop which you had taken from a drawer inside the shop.  You opened the safe and took $11,500.  You then left the shop with the money.

6. You admitted that you used $6,500 of that money to repay a debt to a friend.  You deposited the remaining $5,000 in your own bank account.

7. The offence you pleaded guilty to is one of burglary.  As I am sure you have been told by Ms Wong, the normal starting point for first offenders who commit burglary in non-domestic premises, which this one is, is 2½ years’ imprisonment.

8. Although at that time you committed this offence you had not yet been convicted of any previous offence by the courts, you had, in fact, committed offences of theft in November and in March last year, and you were on bail at the time you committed this offence.  In fact, you had failed to answer your bail at the time you committed this offence.

9. Now, these are features that aggravate this offence. 

10. Moreover, it is clear from the very helpful reports that I have received from Miss Chan Pui-yuk of the Lai King Correctional Institute and Miss Helen Chan Ka-pok of the Probation Service that you were frequently switching jobs at that time.

11. However, on 7 August last year and 20 September last year, after you had committed this offence - the offence now before the court - two rehabilitation orders were made against you in respect of the earlier offences of theft.

12. The report that Miss Chan gives of your progress since the making of those orders is encouraging.  You obtained a certificate in beauty care and a certificate in retail services and clerical training. 

13. Miss Chan says that you show deep remorse.  She says that you have gained deep insight into your past misdeeds.  She says that you recognise now that you committed the current offence out of greed and that you had disappointed your parents and you were willing to make compensation. 

14. She recommends that the court make a further rehabilitation order rather than an order that you be detained in a training centre.

15. I very much hope that Miss Chan is right in the views that she expressed.

16. This burglary is a serious offence and it would normally carry a custodial sentence that would last for a longer period than you would receive if you were ordered to be detained in a rehabilitation centre.

17. However, in the light of Miss Chan’s comments, I consider it would be in the best interests, both of you and of society generally, if I were to give you a last chance and make a further order that you be detained in a rehabilitation centre.

18. If you do not take this chance, you are likely to find that in future, courts will have little alternative but to sentence you to terms of imprisonment.

COURT: Do you understand?

A. Understood.

19. Therefore, I make an order for your detention in a rehabilitation centre and I make a compensation order that I order that you pay EPSA Corporation Limited the sum of $5,467.47 as compensation.