Introduction:
This is a 3 year project from April 2005 to March 2008 which is funded by the Global Opportunities Fund and jointly run by the British Council and Ministry of Justice. The purpose of the project is to contribute to human rights protection in the prisons through training prison staff and reforming prison management. There will be 45 prison staff taking the training course in UK and another 100 prison staff receiving cascaded training afterwards in China.

Project activities:

1. Sino-British Workshop on Prison Management was held at Beijing in September, 2005. Mr. Rob Allen and Mr. Colin Allen of ICPS (International Centre of Prison Studies of King’s College London) were invited to attend the workshop. The deputy director general of Prison Administration Bureau of MOJ and another 40 Chinese prison staff were also invited to the workshop.
2. An on-site visit on the purpose of assessing prison staff training needs was carried out by two UK experts from 28-30 Sept. 2005 at Shanghai and Hangzhou.
3. An empirical research was carried out in November 2005 by a research team of MOJ. The research was held in 9 local prisons aiming to reveal current status of prison management with a highlight on the classification of offenders.
4. 16 senior officials who are directly in charge of the prison reform were selected by MOJ to undertake a 15-day tailor-made prison staff training curriculum in UK from 11th  March.
5. On the purpose to contribute to Human Rights protection in Prisons, 50 middle-rank prison staff selected from the prison management system across China attended the cascaded training held from 10th -11th July 2006 in Huhhot, Inner Mongolia.
6. The second Chinese Prison Staff training was carried out from 18th November to 2nd December in the UK. Altogether 16 middle rank prison staff were selected form both central and local prison administration bureaux and prisons. The project will send the last group of Chinese prison staff to take the training course in UK in 2007.