CORRECTIONAL Services Commissioner Eric McCosh is right; illegal immigrants (IIs) sentenced only for entering Hong Kong illegally should not be in prison. They are not thieves, murderers or rapists - they have come to Hong Kong to work (like most people here). The Correctional Services Department's job is to focus on changing criminals into law-abiding citizens; 30 per cent of the prisoners are IIs. This brings overcrowding in Hong Kong prisons to an unacceptable level. If this 30 per cent was removed from the prisons, the facilities, manpower and resources of the CSD could be used entirely for trying to change criminals into non-criminals and thus reduce crime. Alternative suggestions to imprisonment of IIs might be - a) holding them in a camp similar to the boat people; b) fining them or, c) as Mr McCosh suggests, deportation.
