Prisons shouldn’t breed social misfits

The Minister for the Interior, Alhaji Mohammed Mubarak Muntaka, at a meeting with Islamic leaders in the Ashanti Region recently expressed concern over the country’s prisons having become hubs of drug trafficking, highlighting the lack of proper security and surveillance infrastructure as the primary cause.

The absence of X-ray scanners and CCTV cameras has made it impossible to detect contraband items being smuggled into our prisons, turning these facilities into thriving drug markets.

The situation becomes more alarming when viewed against the backdrop that prisoners survive on a meagre allowance of GH¢1.80 per day for three meals, an amount that has remained unchanged since 2011.

The harsh conditions in the prisons have no doubt contributed to the inmates trafficking and abusing drugs as a coping mechanism.

The Daily Graphic is at its wit’s end, wondering how an adult human being can survive on GH¢1.80 a day.

At the current price of 50 pesewas for a sachet of water, it means that the feeding fee per prisoner a day cannot even buy four sachets of water. 

This is in sharp contrast to the school feeding programme, which provides just one meal but has been increased to GH¢2.

This is not to argue that the GH¢2 per child per day is enough. 

But it portrays the premium the country places on our unfortunate brethren who have found themselves behind bars for committing one crime or another.

It is worth noting that there may even be others who are on remand not necessarily because they are guilty of any crime, but for the simple reason that their trial is ongoing. 

We need to remind ourselves as a country that the purposes of a sentence of imprisonment or similar measures that deprive  a person of his liberty are primarily to protect society against crime and to reduce recidivism.

These objectives can be achieved only if the period of imprisonment is used to ensure the reintegration of such persons into society upon their release so that they can lead a law-abiding and self-supporting life.  

Thus, the Human Rights Instrument of the Office of the High Commissioner of the United Nations Human Rights rightly provides, among others, that every prisoner shall be provided with food of nutritional value adequate for health and strength, of wholesome quality and well prepared and served.

In a similar vein, the Instrument further enjoins prison administrations and other competent authorities to offer education, vocational training,  work, and  other forms of assistance that are appropriate and available, including those of a remedial, moral, spiritual, social and health-and-sports-based nature, delivered in line with the individual  needs of prisoners.

It is in recognition of these that the Daily Graphic highly applauded the Prisons Service, the University of Cape Coast and an NGO, Plan Volta Foundation, for implementing the Prison Inmates Tertiary Education Programme (PITEP) through which 63 inmates completed tertiary studies in various disciplines recently.

But these two different faces of our prisons are counter-productive.

How do we in one breadth train people to be of use to society at the end of serving their prison sentences, while at the same time breeding drug addicts and traffickers, via our actions and inaction,  produce inmates who would come out to terrorise citizens?

The issue of drugs in the country’s prisons has been mentioned many times, but to come from an Interior Minister must awaken all of us to act with dispatch to nip the act in the bud.

Our prisons should be centres where inmates, after serving their terms, will become assets to themselves and society and not liabilities.

With the reset mantra of the government, we think the prisons should be given pride of place.

We want to align with the proposals made by the minister that modern technology, including X-ray scanners and CCTV cameras, be introduced to help detect contrabands and monitor activities within our prisons, in addition to the provision of adequate security measures and improvement in living conditions.

We also urge the minister to provide support for community programmes to prevent drug abuse and promote rehabilitation as a relief to residents and law enforcement agencies that have been grappling with the issue of drug dens for years.