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Vocational Training for Adults in Custody

Bureau / Department Correctional Services Department (CSD)
Objective To enhance the employability of adult offenders thereby facilitating their reintegration into society after release from correctional institutions.
Content Adults in custody, unless physically unfit, are required by law to engage in useful work. This enables them to develop good work habits and a sense of responsibility, and to acquire basic skills in specific trades. Since employment is a key reintegration factor, CSD has since June 2006 started to introduce full-time technical and commercial vocational training courses for local adult offenders. Such training was provided to male adults in custody as a start given resource constraints and that males in custody constituted majority of the penal population. With experience gained and having identified the vocational training needs of female adults in custody, full-time vocational training was extended to female adult offenders with the introduction of a Commercial and Retailing Service Course for them in February 2008. Now courses catering the vocational training needs of females in custody include computer application, commerce and retailing, food and beverage services, and health care.
Groups / Persons Affected Local adults in custody, male or female.
Impact In discharging its main functions, namely custodial management and rehabilitation of offenders, CSD fully recognises that male and female persons in custody have different needs and such differences call for different treatment. This approach is in line with the gender mainstreaming concept. The impacts of adopting this approach in relation to vocational training for persons in custody are :
  • the vocational needs of persons in custody, and their preference for vocational training, are identified through different surveys based on gender;
  • job market data of respective gender is used as basis to design the vocational training course for that gender, e.g. Commercial and Retailing Service Course for female adults in custody; and
  • effectiveness of vocational training courses provided for male and female offenders is evaluated separately.
As an established policy, CSD upholds gender disaggregation in the treatment of persons committed to CSD's custody and has put in place arrangements to that end, notably separate correctional institutions for male and female persons in custody. CSD will continue to take heed of the gender mainstreaming concept in its policy and organisational development.
Success Factor / Lessons Learned Designing a vocational training course that addresses the needs of course participants is the single most important factor for success in the case of providing vocational training for adults in custody. Based on the results so far, gender has remained an important consideration to that end apart from age, educational and vocational background of the persons in custody.