Restrictions on Visits

Length and Frequency of Visits

Open versus Closed Visits

The rule of closed visits also affects numerous Category C and D prisoners who are held in high security institutions. Although they would otherwise be permitted open visits, the institutions in which they are held make no provision for such visits. This is an especial problem at the Lai Chi Kok Reception Centre, which holds all adult male remand prisoners, regardless of their crime. Yet other maximum security prisons, including Shek Pik and Stanley, also hold Category C prisoners.(103)

It should be emphasized that Hong Kong's restrictions on open visits are not without justification. Large numbers of prisoners are drug users. Drugs may be smuggled into prison during open visits and, indeed, in many prison systems in which open visits are the rule, such smuggling is a serious problem. European, Latin American, and U.S. prisons, for example, are often ridden with drugs. Besides the obvious health concerns, an influx of drugs into the prisons often leads to prisoner-on-prisoner intimidation and violence.(104)

While the CSD's success in keeping drugs out of the prison system is to be applauded, the Human Rights Watch/Hong Kong Human Rights Monitor delegation would encourage reliance on alternative means of achieving this objective -- means which are less damaging to prisoners' social bonds.(105) Indeed, the CSD acknowledges that the use of closed visits is but one element of a multifaceted anti-drug strategy. Because other techniques such as searches have also proved effective, drugs are not a problem even in the many facilities which employ open visits.(106)

The CSD has already shown some flexibility regarding closed versus open visits. In an important innovation, maximum security Shek Pik Prison has been offering open visits to prisoners whose sentences are longer than four years. This pilot program, which only applies to visits from close family members, is strictly regulated: prisoners must make a special application to be considered for it; they must have gone twelve months without a disciplinary report; and they cannot have any past history of drug use in prison.

The open visit program was initiated three years ago, and since that time it has operated without a hitch.(107) Indeed, in the year prior to April 1997, over 1,000 open visits were held at Shek Pik.(108)

Whatever the reason -- whether they are foreigners whose families live too far away to visit or whether they are local prisoners whose relations with their families and friends have deteriorated -- a full one-quarter of Hong Kong prisoners receive no visits at all.(109) The goal of the Prisoners' Friends' Association (PFA), a voluntary organization, is to offer much-needed friendship and social connection to such prisoners.

PFA members consist of pen friends and prison visitors. Pen friends, as the name suggests, correspond with prisoners. Prison visitors, after they have been reviewed by the CSD, are permitted approximately forty-minute visits with inmates in the legal visit rooms of the prisons. Such visitors normally establish a stable relationship with individual prisoners, visiting one person over a long period of time, sometimes years. Unfortunately, since PFA members are only allowed to visit prisoners who have no other outside contacts, if that prisoner receives even a single visit, then he or she is barred from further PFA visits. About one hundred PFA members are prison visitors; a handful of others only write letters.(110)

Until the recently passed Prison Rules amendments went into effect, the Hong Kong prison system imposed significant restrictions on prisoners' correspondence with outsiders. The restrictions pertained to the number of letters that could be sent, the permissible addressees, and the letters' content.

The new amendments, passed in May 1997, greatly relaxed these curbs on correspondence. Whereas convicted prisoners were previously limited to sending out a single letter per week, they are now allowed to send out an unlimited number.(111) One letter per week is subsidized by the government, while the prisoner must generally pay for additional letters out of his prison earnings. In addition, under certain circumstances-for example, if the prisoner is held in a detention center, an addiction treatment center, or a training center, or is under twenty-one-the government will bear the cost of such additional letters.(112) Finally, as under the previous rules, unlimited incoming correspondence is allowed, subject to a couple of specific limitations.(113)

In another significant improvement, prisoners may now correspond with anyone, instead of being limited to corresponding with their friends and relatives.(114) What this means, notably, is that prisoners may now send letters to the media and to outside organizations with an interest in prison issues, such as human rights organizations.

The rules regarding censorship have also been greatly modified, although content restrictions on correspondence have not been entirely lifted. Previously, any incoming or outgoing letter that the prison authorities deemed "objectionable" could be banned, giving officials broad discretion to censor inmates' correspondence.(115) At present, the prison authorities' power to control the content of inmates' correspondence is regulated by a detailed set of rules. Only letters to or from prisoners in maximum security institutions may routinely be read (although letters to all prisoners may be checked for contraband), while letters to or from prisoners in other facilities may be read under certain circumstances. However, one of the enumerated circumstances is when, in the view of the superintendent, "the reading would be in the best interests of the prisoner" -- a vague and obviously malleable criterion.(116)

Prison Rule 47A, which regulates the reading of correspondence and censorship, now sets out nine specific classes of letters for which censorship is justified, in contrast to the previous blanket category of objectionable material. It allows CSD staff to bar letters that, among other things, contain information on escape plots; threats, extortion, obscenity, or "gratuitous profanity"; messages in code; information that would infringe upon the privacy of other prisoners or of CSD staff; and "any material that by its nature or content poses a threat to any individual's personal safety or to the security, good order and discipline of the prison." The last category is somewhat vague, although it is still an unquestionable improvement upon the previous standard.

Subcategory (g) of Prison Rule 47A, however, is of concern in that it imposes a particular restriction on material directed to the media. It bars prisoners from sending letters "intended for publication or for broadcast by radio or television" that refer to other prisoners or to CSD staff "in such a way that they may be identified." In other words, if a prisoner were to attempt to report a particular prison abuse to the media-such as an unjustified beating by guards-and he or she named the guilty parties, then the letter could be barred even if the superintendent knew that the incident was accurately described and even if the public had a strong interest in learning of the situation. In the view of the Human Rights Watch/Hong Kong Human Rights Monitor delegation, it is important that this restriction be repealed.

Prisoners do not have regular access to telephones. There are no telephones in the day rooms of the prisons or in other areas where prisoners congregate. Prison officials told us, nonetheless, that prisoners may request to make collect phone calls from the administrative areas of the prison. Although they said that such requests are generally granted when prisoners have "a compelling reason" -- or, in the words of other officials, "a strong justification" -- the officials appear to have untrammelled discretion to grant or deny such requests.(117) Legitimate justifications for making a phone call, we were told, include sick family members or pressing legal matters.(118) Most prisoners told us that they had never made a phone call from the prison. The delegation did meet a Vietnamese prisoner, however, who stated that he had received permission to call home three months prior to our visit and had been allowed to make such calls once a month.

The Human Rights Watch/Hong Kong Human Rights Monitor delegation encourages the CSD to follow what is common practice in other industrialized countries, and regularize prisoners' access to telephones. Particularly for illiterate prisoners-a not-insignificant proportion of the Hong Kong prison population-as well as for foreign prisoners whose relatives are rarely able to visit, more generous telephone rules would be of great benefit.

To facilitate communications regarding their criminal cases and other legal matters, prisoners are permitted contact visits with their lawyers. These visits take place "in the sight but not in the hearing" of CSD officers, normally in small offices in the visiting areas of the prisons.(119) The Human Rights Watch/Hong Kong Human Rights Monitor delegation visited a number of the offices set apart for such visits and found all of them to be quite satisfactory.

In addition to visits, prisoners may send confidential letters to their legal counsel.(120)

Until the recent amendments were passed, the legal provision covering prisoners' reading materials contained no explicit standards by which to determine whether a given book or periodical might be kept out of the prison. The present rule, in contrast, sets out five categories of reading materials that the superintendent may bar: those which contain information on manufacturing weapons, dangerous drugs, and similar items; those which describe or encourage prison violence or prison escapes; those which "facilitate gambling" or are "detrimental to [any prisoner's] rehabilitation"; those which encourage criminal or disciplinary offenses; and those which "pose a threat to any individual's personal safety or to the security, good order and discipline of the prison."(121) As with the rule regarding censorship of prisoners' correspondence, these categories have an obvious degree of vagueness and malleability, but they do at least provide greater guidance than in the past.

Moreover, even prior to the new rules, it appears that censorship of reading materials had become relatively unintrusive in recent years. The prison officials who spoke to the Human Rights Watch/Hong Kong Human Rights Monitor delegation uniformly stated that they practiced very minimal censorship of prisoners' reading materials, mostly limited to barring explicit sexual material, the special racing supplement, and descriptions of crime. Otherwise, prisoners freely subscribe to a variety of newspapers and magazines, and may receive other reading materials from visitors. For security reasons, certain prisons will not accept hardcover books.

Routine censorship of prisoners' reading materials was practiced in the past, however, and certain traces of it have not entirely disappeared. At Tai Tam Gap Correctional Institution, the Human Rights Watch/Hong Kong Human Rights Monitor delegation found a notice posted in the visitors' waiting room describing which types of books would be banned as "objectionable." It listed seven such categories, including "books containing political doctrine or dogma and anti-government propaganda," "medical books," and "law or books of a legal nature."(122) The superintendent of the facility assured the Human Rights Watch/Hong Kong Human Rights Monitor delegation, however, that the notice was obsolete and the rules it stated were not enforced. At Hei Ling Chau Addiction Treatment Centre, a notice in the visitors' waiting room stated that any book that "discusses or criticises the administration of justice" would be banned. The Human Rights Watch/Hong Kong Human Rights Monitor delegation sees no justification for prohibiting any of the above categories of books, and strongly urges the CSD to remove these notices.

Recently, a more defensible instance of CSD censorship was challenged in court by an inmate held at Stanley Prison. Because gambling is a serious problem in the prisons, the CSD decided in May 1995 to remove the special racing supplements from the newspapers that many prisoners received. A prisoner who claimed to be a horse racing fan challenged this ban on several grounds, among them, that the ban violated the Bill of Rights' protections on the right to receive information; he prevailed in the High Court in late 1995.(123) Reviewing this ruling the following year, the Court of Appeal reversed it.

Although the Human Rights Watch/Hong Kong Human Rights Monitor delegation understands the CSD's strong interest in removing the racing supplements from prisoners' newspapers and, accordingly, is not overly concerned as to this narrow issue, we find the underlying reasoning of the Court of Appeal's decision extremely disturbing. Relying on a saving clause in Part III of the Hong Kong Bill of Rights, the Court of Appeal essentially stated that prisoners are beyond the reach of the the Bill of Rights' substantive protections.(124) Such a miserly reading of the Bill of Rights leaves prisoners entirely unprotected from abuse and is at odds with the document's basic purpose. Moreover, as an indication of the judiciary's approach to interpreting the Bill of Rights, it bodes poorly for the protection of the fundamental rights of all Hong Kong residents.