This is the second of the two part series on the Ghana Prisons Service. The first story looked at the challenges facing the Ghana Prisons Service in delivering on its mandate of safe custody, reforming and rehabilitating convicted persons and those on remand. This piece, however, looks at what the service is doing and the need for reforms in the service with special focus on its 10-year strategic plan.
The new vision of the Ghana Prisons Service is to build a world-class institution to attain sustainable public safety through excellence in corrections management.”
Rightly so, the service a few years ago started reforms based on the redirection of the Ghana Prisons Service’s focus from merely warehousing prisoners to reformation and rehabilitation.
Rev Dr Stephen Wengam, Chairman of the Prison Council, after inspecting some of the prison facilities in the country last year, saw the need to change the way inmates are handled.
“We must stop thinking of prisons simply as facilities where criminals are dumped. We should collectively develop the holistic approach of restorative justice that incarcerates offenders while effectively addressing their propensity to re-offend,” he said.
He indicated that if well-resourced, the prisons in the country have the capacity to extend rehabilitation programmes to the most prolific group of re-offenders labeled as hardened criminals and those who are released from short custodial sentences.
Rev Dr Wengam said the council has identified a strong correlation between the capacity of the Ghana Prisons Service to reform inmates and the crime rate, indicating that societies which are unable to reform tend to have higher crime incidence.
“The heart of the reform agenda is to make our country safer. We want to tackle re-offending rates head-on and implement programmes aimed at rehabilitating offenders through the prisons gate’ from custody into the community,” he said.
He said the prisons can be turned into success stories places where deviants incarcerated are taught beneficial skills and given a chance to pay their debts to society in a meaningful way if it is given the needed attention.
Success Stories
Rev Dr Wengam mentioned that the service over the years had equipped both male and female inmates with skills, but due to challenges in logistics only a few were able to benefit.
Through its skills development programmes in construction, farming, textile making, basket weaving, beads making and sowing, some inmates have gained workable skills they can use as a source of livelihood after they are reintegrated into society,” he said.
Inmates in prisons are already making use of these skills with the construction of buildings such as Duayaw-Nkwanta Camp Prison, drills square at the training school, the senior officer’s mess at cantonments, the prisons basketball court cantonments, prisons interdenominational church cantonments, one-storey dormitory under construction at the Ordorgornor Senior High School being done by inmates of the Ghana Prisons Service.
Inmates of prisons across the country like the Awutu Prison, James Camp Prison, Nsawam Prison, Tamale Female Prison and the Senior Correctional Centre have also been trained in batik tie-and-dye, rabbit rearing, bread making, animal husbandry, kente weaving, block moulding, carpentry, basketry and beads for necklace and earrings.
Rev Dr Wengam said more prisoners can benefit from skills training if enough resources are given to his outfit to enhance its operations.
“To be successful in the new paradigm shift, improved structures with the needed training facilities must be brought into effect,” said the Director-General, Ghana Prisons Service, Matilda Baffour-Awuah.
Ten-Year Strategic Plan
The Ghana Prisons Service, in its quest to deliver on its constitutional mandate, has developed a 10-year strategic plan for from 2013 to 2022.
The plan involves clear strategic interventions with particular emphasis on sustainable contribution to public safety, effective inmate treatment programmes, enhancement of wealth creation to bridge the financial gap, rebranding of the Ghana Prisons Service and the general institutional management.
The strategic plan, Rev Dr Wengam said, is intended to better place the service to leverage on its enormous human resource base to create a deserving image for itself as well as generate the needed revenue to improve the service to meet modern international corrections standards for the treatment of offenders.
“The 10-year strategic plan will serve as a tool to redirect the enormous resources, strengths and opportunities available to the service towards efficient and effective utilisation in a synergic manner to make the service more productive and attractive to its stakeholders,” he said.
Madam Baffour-Awuah, who highlighted the major points in the strategic plan, added that the plan will look at increasing agricultural productivity through the acquisition of machinery and tools in order to increase food production to augment the cost of feeding inmates, improve their diet and generate income to improve prisons’ Internally Generated Funds (IGF).
She said with adequate irrigation and machinery, the service would increase its yield and provide all the cereals and vegetables needed by the service.
The Director-General of the Ghana Prisons Service also indicated that the plan would focus on the establishment of a furniture and building industries in the service to utilise cheap prison labour for production and creation of an earning scheme for prisoners whose services will be engaged.
“The strategic plan on industry looks at separation of the inmates’ trade training from industrial production to ensure that training precede industrial production, reorganise the construction unit to bid for contracts to raise income and undertake maintenance of physical infrastructure, acquire modern units and establish a vibrant marketing unit,” she said.
On physical infrastructure, the plan aims to construct, operate and maintain a progressive and humane prison infrastructure to reduce overcrowding which will in turn facilitate the reformation programmes.
“Prisons will also be specialised by security level to ensure effective identification and classification of convicts,” she added.
Project ‘Efiase’
She indicated that over the past 10 years, successive prison administrations have sought to improve the prison system, but have not been successful because of financial challenges.
Noting that the central government has consistently provided funding for the upkeep of prisoners and the management of prisons, Madam Baffour-Awuah mentioned that the current thrust of ideology in prisons administration which is more of reformation, rehabilitation and total correction of offending behaviour involves much more capital expenditures that the service has been receiving.
It is in this regard that the current administration launched the ‘Efiase Project’ to bring all stakeholders on board to find lasting solutions to improve infrastructure and service delivery in all prisons across the country.
Project ‘Efiase’ (the Akan word for prison) is the idea of the prison council to reach out to the private sector, as well as ordinary Ghanaians to support government’s effort in the implementation of the 10-year strategic plan.
The initial target for the project is GH¢20 million to begin the implementation of the strategic plan.
Rev Dr Wengam, who called on all to help, said “We also appeal to businesses in Ghana to offer the service contracts. What the service lacks is opportunity and that’s why the service is soliciting your assistance.”
He said the prisons administration is determined to deliver to make ‘Project Efiase’ a reality, urging all to be a part of the history of the Ghana Prisons Service which can be a potential second home for everybody.
Concluding with a quote from the Bible, Rev Dr Wengam said, “The Bible reveals how our attitude toward the prisons can determine where we spend eternity in Matthew 25:36-42 which reads… I needed cloths and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.
Then the righteous will answer him, Lord when did we see hungry and feed you or thirsty and give you something to drink? When did we see you a stranger and invite you in or needing clothes and clothe you? When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you?
The king will reply, truly I tell you whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.
Then he will say to those on his left, depart from me you who are cursed into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angles.”
By Jamila Akweley Okertchiri