Penal policies and programmes for the control and management of offenders have always been essential in maintaining law and order in the colonial setting. Hong Kong, being one of the few remaining British crown colonies in the twentieth century, is used as an example in this thesis to illustrate how colonial penality was developed after the Second World War. Penal policies and programmes in Hong Kong divorced gradually from the British practices after the Second World War and ended with significant differences in 1997 when Hong Kong was handed back to China. This thesis explores in detail how penal policies and programmes were developed in Hong Kong from 1945 to 1997. Roles of the British administrators in London and Hong Kong, local elites and the community at large in the policy making process are studied and suggestions given to explain why Hong Kong only transported certain penal policies and programmes from England after the War. The differences in timing for the implementation of these adopted policies as well as penal policies and programmes which were developed entirely locally are examined. This former British colony is claimed to be one the safest cities in Asia. Penal policies and programmes in Hong Kong are used to explain how they contributed towards the maintenance of law and order in Hong Kong and their relationship with the interwoven political, social, cultural and economical factors and social institutions which helped transforming Hong Kong into a world class city whilst under the British administration. This case study of colonial penality in post-War penal policy and programme development in Hong Kong would provide insights and contributions in the fields of historical and comparative penology.

Offender learning policy in England and Wales is vocationally focused and thus primarily aims to educate prisoners to increase their employability. Through an analysis of letters written by prisoners and interviews with serving prisoners, ex prisoners and prison staff, this qualitative study investigates prisoners’ experiences of education to explore the broad range of ways that such experiences are interpreted. A recurring interpretation involves personal development and this study shows that a range of personal changes and transformations can be attributed to prison education experiences. This suggests that prisoners’ interpretations of their educational experiences often go beyond employability. This study also provides a greater understanding of prisoners’ identities by drawing on elements of the research participants’ life histories and locating experiences of education within their narratives. This places the study in an in depth human context and as such, it has emerged that prisoners’ experiences of education can be better understood in the context of aspects of their life stories. This study reveals that prisoners who have not previously had positive educational experiences are often lacking in personal development and emotional maturity and therefore offender learning should be concerned with developing the ‘whole person’ in addition to giving prisoners skills for employment. As such, value can be ascribed to personal developments that are not directly related to employability such as the ability to cope with the experience of imprisonment and improved family relationships. By including such findings, this research also shows how understanding prisoners’ experiences of education contributes to understanding key themes in prison sociology: coping, masculinity, identity and the pains of imprisonment. This study concerns issues spanning a range of academic disciplines including criminology, sociology and education. As such, it is hoped that this thesis will be of interest to academics in the aforementioned subject areas as well as prison researchers, future prison researchers, prison teachers, prison staff, professionals in criminal justice, and any person with an interest in contemporary imprisonment.