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Prisons in Ghana, a miserable place to be
Audrey Micah, Ghanadot

Accra, Jan 28, Ghanadot - Prisoners complaints ranged from tasteless foods to an environment which makes them more delinquent than they were before serving their terms. This has brought to the fore the call for prison reforms.

Indeed the New Patriotic Party (NPP) government started its own reforms and so did the National Democratic Congress (NDC) before it.

Two people who were recently released under a pardon by the former president John Kufuor have spoken about the state of the country’s prisons. Tshastu Tsikata hinted that he will launch a campaign to assist the service while Geeman drew attention to the congestion at the prisons.

With the change in government, many people are waiting anxiously to see the changes that would be brought to uplift condition within the prison services.

Mrs. Gloria Fati Abudu, Public Relations Officer of the Ghana Prison Service outlined what some of the things the previous government did as well as the expectations the service is looking forward to receive from the Mills administration.

She revealed that the NPP government started with the building of the Ankofo maximum security prison and hopes that as soon as it is completed it will ease the congestion in the prison.

“As soon as the Ankofo Maximum security prison is completed, it will ease the congestion in our prison because we are going to move all the hardened criminals from the Nsawam medium security prison to Ankofo maximum security prison and there are also rooms created there for the other inmates to move into”.

According to her, though imprisonment is meant to rehabilitate inmates, when they come and go on discharge, they are not accepted in society which makes them join the group and return to the prisons, this to her have increased the rate to 11.3 per cent as in July 2007.

On the expectations of the current government, Mrs. Abudu said “we want adequate facilities to train the inmates to become responsible citizens. Our machines that were given to us during the colonial era have all collapsed”.

She was grateful that the Nsawan prison now has a modern carpentry shop, and called on the government and organisations to help them get more to help the inmates.

To her, one of the problems facing officers is accommodation, and that when that is solved the officers will be motivated to even work harder. According to her the previous government started some construction for them and that they would be happy if President Mills will continue from where it was stopped.

According to a former minister at the Ministry of the Interior, Nana Obiri Boahen, though the NPP government did not inherit the best of conditions at the prisons when they took power, they have been able to improve it.

He admitted that there is much to be done and a serious approach needs to be implemented to look at the conditions of the prisons and find accurate solutions to the problems. To him though the NPP government built one of the best prisons which conditions of service was good, much need to done to perk-up the quality of service for prison officers.

Ghanadot

 

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Prisons in Ghana, a miserable place to be

Accra, Jan 28, Ghanadot - Prisoners complaints ranged from tasteless foods to an environment which makes them more delinquent than they were before serving their terms. This has brought to the fore the call for prison reforms...More