THE Ghana Prisons Service has begun investing in basic and second-cycle education as a way of providing prison inmates the opportunity to acquire further education.
The initiative is meant to make the country’s prisons centres of reformation instead of institutions for punishment.
The good news is that hundreds of prison inmates are already studying towards second-cycle examinations scheduled for 2010.
For a long time, prison inmates have been ignored by society and consigned to the four walls of our prisons to waste their talents, even if they have skills that can be useful to society.
Interestingly, some of the able-bodied inmates who are languishing in jail committed offences such as stealing farm produce or domestic animals for which they could have been committed to community service or suspended sentence.
The trend in our penal system imposes pressure on the budget of the country, resulting in the limited resources being spread thinly to cater for people who, otherwise, could fend for themselves.
It appears that our penal system places emphasis on retributive justice instead of a conscious effort to reform the inmates of our prisons. Thus, some ex-convicts deliberately fall foul of the law so that they can return to prison to enjoy the produce from the farms they helped to cultivate.
Our prisons have facilities for the acquisition of skills in some vocations such as carpentry, masonry and tailoring but sometimes ex-convicts are unable to put those skills at the service of society because of stigmatisation.
The DAILY GRAPHIC concedes that some convicts are discharged as hardened criminals who terrorise society because they feel that society is responsible for their predicament.
Yet there are others who come out of the prisons with a better attitude to life as, in some cases, they become men of God or born-again Christians.
The fundamental problem is that although our prisons are also to serve as centres of reformation, prisons authorities and even society at large think that every prisoner must face retributive justice.
Needless to say, those who make life uncomfortable for society must be made to face the appropriate sanctions to serve as a deterrent to other undesirable elements in society. But, by and large, the prisons were built to help in the character reformation of criminals.
The DAILY GRAPHIC calls for an overhaul of the penal system such that our prisons will help in the rehabilitation of prisoners so that they can be integrated into society after serving their jail terms.
The good news, however, is that prison authorities and other institutions such as the Methodist Church recognise the humanity in prisoners. Prisoners have rights, except that their movement has been restricted.
The Methodist Church has initiated moves to assist in the rehabilitation of prisoners in four prisons — Kumasi Central, Manhyia, Amanfrom and Yeji — in order to reshape their character for service to themselves, society and God.
We need the services of all Ghanaians in the reconstruction efforts of the government and for this reason prisoners who demonstrate enough remorse and are prepared to conform to the norms of society must be helped to contribute their quota to nation-building.
The colonial mindset of looking at our prisons as centres for punishment and to teach people where power lies must be a thing of the past because the history of many great nations is replete with stories of great prisoners who were discharged to become great leaders in society.
Our prisoners can also contribute to nation-building, if we make the right investment in them so that their prison lives will mark a change in their lives.
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