This paper addresses strong cosmic censorship for spacetimes with self-gravitating collisionless matter, evolving from surface-symmetric compact initial data. The global dynamics exhibit qualitatively different features according to the sign of the curvature k of the symmetric surfaces and the cosmological constant ƒ. With a suitable formulation, the question of strong cosmic censorship is settled in the affirmative if ƒ D 0 or k Ä 0, ƒ > 0. In the case ƒ > 0, k D 1, we give a detailed geometric characterization of possible "boundary" components of spacetime; the remaining obstruction to showing strong cosmic censorship in this case has to do with the possible formation of extremal Schwarzschild-de Sitter-type black holes. In the special case that the initial symmetric surfaces are all expanding, strong cosmic censorship is shown in the past for all k; ƒ. Finally, our results also lead to a geometric characterization of the future boundary of black hole interiors for the collapse of asymptotically flat data: in particular, in the case of small perturbations of Schwarzschild data, it is shown that these solutions do not exhibit Cauchy horizons emanating from i C with strictly positive limiting area radius.