Female prisoners sweat to hide hairy legs

Activist Chow Hang-tung goes to court to challenge prison rules requiring female inmates to wear long trousers during summer, while male inmates can wear shorts…

Chow, who has been detained since September 2021, and her lawyers had earlier argued in a writ that the “deprivation of opportunity” to wear shorts for daytime activities “would have the effect of rendering the whole policy discriminatory.”

The female inmates are deprived of an effective way to cool themselves, as they could potentially face a disciplinary offence for pulling up their trousers, Tam added.

Failure to comply with an instruction to wear their trousers properly can result in an offence, according to prison rules.

…However, Tam pointed out that the CSD had not explained how wearing trousers – as opposed to shorts – served the aim of custodial discipline.

Tam said that thermal comfort was only part of the “basket of considerations” that the CSD had taken into consideration when formulating its clothing policies, adding that Chow and her team could not “single out” an individual aspect in their submission.

Citing evidence from CSD clinical psychologist Elise Hung, Lui said that the existing policy was the product of “decades of CSD management” that had identified female inmates’ preference for trousers over shorts.

…Their preference was based on “actual concerns,” including their working needs, the need to cover up scars and wounds, as well as leg hair and mosquito bites, he said.

Citing Hung, Lui said their preference for trousers was largely due to most female inmates’ concerns over “privacy and decency” that could be traced back to “inherent” historical, biological, and psychological differences between men and women.

It surely wouldn’t take the wisdom of Solomon to suggest simply that women prisoners be allowed the choice to wear shorts if they prefer. At least on a trial basis to see whether such a reform would result in a breakdown of custodial discipline.

(I recall seeing male inmates at Victoria Prison emerging every day in brown shorts and bare feet to carry the garbage out of the prison staff quarters on the other side of Old Bailey Street. One guard would stand a few yards up the road and one a few yards down in case a prisoner tried to make a run for it, which they never did. Can’t remember how their legs looked. It later became an Immigration Dept detention facility. I went in a few months after it finally closed, and you could still smell the sweat in the cell blocks.) 

The government’s arguments for requiring long trousers are at least clear. Contrast with the oblique statement on its refusal to allow UK MP Wera Hobhouse to enter the city…

A HKSAR Government spokesman said that it is the Government’s standing policy not to comment on individual cases. The Immigration Department will deal with each case in accordance with the relevant law and immigration policy. It is the duty of immigration officer to ask questions to ascertain that there is no doubt about the purpose of any visit. The person concerned knows best what he or she has done. It will be unhelpful to the person’s case if the person refuses to answer questions put to him or her for that purpose.