WOMEN prisoners are blossoming into sparkling beauties with manicured nails, porcelain-smooth faces and immaculately coiffured hair by joining a new course behind bars.
The sexist maxim that a woman cares more about a clear complexion than she does about a clear conscience appears to be proved by the popularity of the Correctional Services Department's novel facial and beauty care programme.
Drug addicts, thieves and prostitutes are among the women clamouring to learn how to make themselves more attractive in the confines of the Tai Tam Gap Correctional Institution and the maximum security Tai Lam centre.
The newly started course has seen stark prison rooms transformed into makeshift beauty salons in which women criminals are treated like clients and shown the finer points of grooming, cosmetics and skin care.
To ensure its guests receive fine tuition, the Correctional Services Department sent officer Lee Lai-Ching on a beauty course. Infra-red facial lamps, facial vapour generators, lotions, lipsticks and hair wands were bought to put her knowledge into practice.
Ten inmates from the Drug Addiction Treatment Programme and six from the Training Centre programme at Tai Tam Gap who were chosen for the six-month beauty course are now the envy of their fellow prisoners.