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Modern correctional system needed to help offenders
A cosmopolitan society like Hong Kong needs a modern correctional system aims at providing inmates with the opportunity to develop or maintain their skills that would enhance their chances of living a crime-free life after they are released, skills which lead to responsibility, self-reliance and self-discipline.
Speaking at a luncheon meeting of the Y's Men's Club of Hong Kong today (Thursday), the Assistant Commissioner (Vietnamese Migrant) of Correctional Services Department (CSD), Miss Bonnie Wong, said CSD had conducted various in- centre programmes and post-release supervision to achieve these aims.
"These programmes all aim at helping offenders to live a law-abiding life after their release," she stressed.
At present, the department runs four in-centre programmes. They are the prison programme, Training Centre programme, Drug Addiction Treatment Centre Programme and Detention Centre Programme.
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"Apart from running these programmes, the CSD is also involved in making recommendations to the courts on the most appropriate sentence to be imposed on young offenders and drug addicts," Miss Wong said.
Moreover, CSD is also responsible for the statutory post-release supervision of released offenders.
"This service, previously only available to young offenders and those sentenced under the Drug Addiction Treatment Centre Ordinance, has now been extended to adult prisoners serving long and medium term sentences," she said.
"Many modern penal legislation is directed to the rehabilitation of offenders, and there are people who maintain that reformation should be the main, if not the only, object of sentencing.
However, Miss Wong agreed that rehabilitation of offenders was not easy.
"It is never easy to change a person," she said.
"While we cannot guarantee that prisoners' experience behind bars will not have involved emotional or social suffering, we should at least provide them with the best possible opportunity to become law-abiding member of the society afterwards."
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