Director of Prisons of Rhodesia to 1954, prisons in Southern Rhodesia were administered by the Southern Rhodesia Prison Department (SRPD). On 30 November 1954, the Federal Assembly of the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland passed the Prisons Department Act (49/1954), which incorporated the SRPD into the Federal Prison Service (FPS), effective 1 December 1954. This arrangement continued until December 1963, when the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland dissolved and autonomy was returned to the individual colonies of Southern Rhodesia, Northern Rhodesia, and Nyasaland, the latter two of which gained independence in 1964 as Zambia and Malawi, respectively. From 1963, the service continued as the Southern
Northern Rhodesia of further white minority governments in Africa, talk of amalgamation resumed. In 1927, the British government appointed the Hilton Young Commission on the possible closer union of the British territories in East and Central Africa. Its majority thought that Northern Rhodesia and Nyasaland should seek closer links with East Africa, but the minority report favoured linking these two territories with Southern Rhodesia on economic grounds. Even before the Commission's report was published, there were discussions between the Northern Rhodesian settlers and the Southern Rhodesian government on the terms of a total union of the two Rhodesias as a single colony.