ENG-2006 — Page 404

336 Public Order

Correctional Services Industries

The Correctional Services Industries (CSI) provide work for adult prisoners as required by law. Apart from keeping the inmates gainfully occupied, CSI help them develop good working habits and a sense of responsibility, build up self-confidence, learn how to work as a team and acquire the basic skills for various trades.

In 2006, a daily average of about 6 717 prisoners were engaged in CSI, which provides a wide range of goods and services for government departments and public organisations. Products made by the inmates under the CSI programme include furniture, uniforms, leather goods, hospital linen, protective filter mask, fibreglass litter containers, traffic signs and precast concrete products such as paving blocks, tactile slabs, cable covers and kerbs for highways and infrastructure projects.

Prisoners also provide laundry services for hospitals, clinics and the ambulance. depots, and they also bind books for public libraries, undertake printing work and make file jackets and envelopes. Products and services provided by the CSI were worth $444 million in 2006.

Prisoners Welfare Services

Programme Officers look after the welfare of detainees and prisoners, and help them to deal with personal problems and difficulties arising from their detention or imprisonment. Apart from conducting individual and group counselling sessions, the officers help run various rehabilitation programmes and provide services such as organising pre-release re-integration orientation courses, making arrangements for the prisoners to meet their family members and supplying them with information on community resources.

Drug Addiction Treatment

The CSD runs a compulsory treatment programme for convicted drug addicts, which provides the courts with an alternative to imprisonment. Male and female inmates are accommodated at Hei Ling Chau Addiction Treatment Centre and its annex respectively. Young addicts aged between 14 and 20 are accommodated separately from the adults. An inmate undergoes in-centre treatment for a period of between two and 12 months, followed by one year of statutory supervision. The programme is based on therapeutic treatment, discipline, work programmes, outdoor physical activities and comprehensive supervision services.

Medical Services

Hospitals are set up in every institution to provide inmates with basic medical treatment, health care and dental services. Inmates who need specialist treatment are either referred to visiting specialists or to specialist clinics in public hospitals. Women prisoners who are pregnant are referred to public hospitals to deliver their babies and for related services.

Siu Lam Psychiatric Centre treats prisoners with mental health problems and offers psychiatric consultations and assessments for inmates on referral from other institutions and the courts.