XN000022-1996-07-03 — Page 10

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Amendments to prison rules proposed

The Government has proposed amendments to the prison rules, which, among other things, seek to relax the restrictions on prisoners' correspondence and to empower the Commissioner to withhold from inmates publications which may pose a threat to good order or discipline within penal institutions.

A government spokesman said the authorities had completed a comprehensive review of the prison rules, including an assessment of their acceptability in relation to the Bill of Rights Ordinance (BORO).

A number of amendments under the Prison (Amendment) Rules 1996 are now proposed to ensure consistency with BORO and to allow for more effective and efficient administration of the rules.

"One of the proposed amendments is to ease the restrictions under Prison Rule 47 to allow prisoners to write an unlimited number of letters each week," the spokesman said.

"We also propose to remove the restriction that prisoners can correspond with their friends and relatives only, and to relax the examination requirement so that while Correctional Services staff may continue to check for contrabands in all institutions, routine reading of letters will be done in maximum security prisons only.

"Under the new rule, Correctional Services staff would not read the correspondence of prisoners in medium security and minimum security prisons unless the staff have good reasons to believe that the contents threaten the security, good order or discipline in the institution.

"Routine security checks for contraband or restricted materials will continue to

be conducted on incoming and outgoing correspondence."

He stressed that these amendments were consistent with the BORO.

Referring to a recent High Court ruling against the withholding of horse-racing supplements, the spokesman said the ruling had weakened the Commissioner of Correctional Services' ability to control gambling activities in penal institutions.

The High Court has held that such withholding as not lawful because Prison Rule 56 does not provide the Commissioner with such authority.

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