ENG-1960 — Page 248

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LAW, ORDER AND RECORDS

afforest the catchment area of the new Shek Pik reservoir, and eventually the whole south-eastern end of Lantau.

This new prison at Tong Fuk will be the first to be built in Hong Kong for twenty five years. Institutions, even of the open kind, are expensive to build, and the other new ventures since the war have been accommodated in existing buildings. Considerable sums had to be spent on adaptation, but the total was only a fraction of what new institutions would have cost. Chi Ma Wan Prison, the first of the open prisons, was formerly a home for disabled people; Stanley Training Centre, the pioneer open Centre for boys, was a group of food storage huts; Tai Lam Prison occupies the contractors' lines for the building of Tai Lam Chung dam, and Cape Collinson Training Centre occupies a former army coastal battery site. It so happens that all these are in exceptionally beautiful surroundings and were easily adaptable for prison pur- poses. The possibility of making more such 'take-over bids' has come to an end, at least for the time being; hence the decision to build an entirely new open prison at Tong Fuk.

The present institutions, administered from a central Head- quarters, are Stanley Prison, Victoria Prison, Lai Chi Kok Prison, Chi Ma Wan Prison, Tai Lam Prison, Stanley Training Centre and Cape Collinson Training Centre. The first three are maximum security; the others are all open. There is also a Staff Training School.

Stanley Prison is the main industrial centre. The value of goods produced for Government has gone up from a once negligible sum to about two million dollars a year. The standard of instruction is high; every trade party has a qualified instructor who must pass the standard of the Technical College. Stanley is very fine architec- turally, and so good was the basic design that apart from the addition of a dining and concert hall, an extension to the work- shops built during the year is the only structural alteration that has had to be made in twenty three years.

Victoria Prison, centrally placed and close to the Courts, is the reception and classification centre.

Lai Chi Kok Prison for women is on the mainland in what was once pleasant countryside but is now a busy industrial area. The majority of the women do not need maximum security and