Prisoners' living condition and CSD's policies in different weather

Zou Xiang Wei made this Freedom of Information request to Correctional Services Department

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Response to this request is long overdue. By law, under all circumstances, Correctional Services Department should have responded by now (details). You can complain by requesting an internal review.

Zou Xiang Wei
Delivered

Dear Sir/Madam,

Recently, there has been some news (Hot weather petition with 100,000 signatures pours heat on Hong Kong prison bosses (https://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/poli... Judicial review filed for female prisoners' right to wear shorts (https://www.thestandard.com.hk/breaking-...) ) about the prisoners’ welfare arousing my classmates and my concern about the prisoners’ living environment. Moreover, the smart prison project was launched at the same time, and some people argue about it. Hence, we are going to do research based on the prisoner's living conditions and we are sincerely requesting the relevant data and information from you.

Q1. Taking Stanley Prison as an example, how many fans are installed in one cell? In what ways does CSD monitor the temperature of prison cells and the environment? In what ways does the CSD assess the ventilation? How many temperatures inside the cells are lowered after turning on the fans?

Q2. Have the prisoners reported the cells are too hot and sultry? And how does the CSD respond to these complaints or issues? After the response, has the situation improved?

Q3. What measures the government has taken to maintain a suitable temperature and good ventilation inside the cells and the prisons.

Q4. Refer to the news Hot weather petition with 100,000 signatures pours heat on Hong Kong prison bosses, there are lots of people concerned about the living condition of the PICs under hot weather and proposing different ways to solve the problem. Have you referred to these suggestions and done some improvements?

Q5. Refer to the news Judicial review filed for female prisoners' right to wear shorts, can we know the reason why the female prisoners cannot wear shorts, even in summer?

I really hope the CSD could look into this matter and answer these questions under the Code on Access to Information. I am sure that the questions above could help us review and further discuss how Prison's living conditions could be improved to better benefit prisoners. Thanks in advance for your information.

Yours faithfully,
Zou Xiang Wei
Hong Kong Baptist University
Kowloon Tong, Hong Kong

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