Dear Correctional Services Department,

We are a group of students from Hong Kong Baptist University and working on a project about Prisoners’ Welfare in Hong Kong. We are writing to seek information about educational support in prison. Referring to the data published on https://www.csd.gov.hk/english/statistic..., we find that the recidivism rate is still high while the passing rate of public examinations and vocational qualifications examinations is great. We need you to provide more information for us to evaluate whether current educational resources are sufficient in prison:

1) How many prisoners participated in exam examination courses in total and how many prisoners are eligible to join the program? What’s the recidivism rate of the prisoners who joined in the program? How does this group compare to the entire PICs? Please provide last 5 years data.

2) How many prisoners participated in the vocational training program in total and how many prisoners are eligible to join the program? What’s the recidivism rate of the prisoners who joined in the program? How does this group compare to the entire PICs? Please provide last 5 years data.

3) We noticed that you mentioned libraries in prison, refer to question 40(https://www.csd.gov.hk/english/info/qa/q...). Please refer us to the reports on libraries or other educational facilities in all the prisons in HK.

4) We noticed that you answered some questions about e-learning, refer to question 41(https://www.csd.gov.hk/english/info/qa/q...). Could you refer us to reports on the programme offered by the Open University since 2015?

5) What is the procedure for PICs to access such educational facilities and services mentioned in question 3 and 4 above? Please specify.

Please also notice the following statement about our expectations of how this request should be handled.

The data and information we ask above will help us prove or support certain speculations in the project. We expect answers to each and every question separately rather than an answer without clearly indicating which questions were addressed. Also, what we want is the most detailed information of each program, not some general statements. We really appreciate your efforts in maintaining transparency and accountability under the Code on Access to Information.

Yours faithfully,
Yuanqi Xiong
Peiang Chang