ABSTRACT
On 14 January 1998, the Hong Kong Correctional Services Department (CSD) set up a Rehabilitation Division with responsibility for offender rehabilitation in Hong Kong. This chapter analyses the development of offender rehabilitation at different times under the Prisons Department and the CSD. It presents whether the "nothing works" attitude on offender rehabilitation found in the West in the 1970s had any impacts in Hong Kong. The history of Hong Kong's prisons is as old as the history of Hong Kong itself. Victoria Gaol was one of the secure buildings erected in the colony after the British took possession of Hong Kong in 1841. The important tool for offender rehabilitation at the training centres is vocational training. Another major CSD initiative in offender rehabilitation is the introduction of the Risks and Needs Assessment and Management Protocol for offenders in Hong Kong. Young offenders were located in a reformatory in some converted food warehouses in Stanley from 1946 to 1953.
