Letters | Quarantining letters: Covid-19 rules in prisons are tough on children with incarcerated parents
- Readers discuss the coronavirus measures in prisons that limit family visits and slow down correspondence, Macau’s efforts to contain its latest outbreak, and Hong Kong’s growing pandemic fatigue
I write with reference to the current prison policy which requires all incoming letters to inmates to be quarantined for three days (often longer in our experience), which seems illogical given Covid-19 is not primarily spread through surface transmission and the negligible risk of surface transmission can be mitigated through adequate hand hygiene.
This has created a huge emotional toll on many underaged children whose parents are being detained as they cannot reach their parents easily at an age when having parental guidance is crucial for their development. They have to wait for two weeks, often even longer with public holidays, to get a response from their parents.
While limiting inmates’ visitation allowance can be regarded as part of the legal punitive sanctions placed on them – the heavy price of breaching the law – such constraints have had a huge impact on families, who basically have to pick names out of a hat to decide who gets to visit their loved ones each month. This puts a huge burden on underage children in particular.
I have emailed the Correctional Services Department and only received a templated, 50-word response.