10-year strategic plan to transform prisons
The Ghana Prisons Council is to launch a 10-year strategic plan that will transform the country's prisons into reformation centres.
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According to the council, it would help mobilise resources to drive the agenda for the reforms to ensure that prisoners did not only live in a conducive environment but also acquired employable skills while in prison.
One of such fundraising initiatives is dubbed 'Efiase.'
The Chairman of the Council, Reverend Dr Stephen Wengam, who was among the First Lady's delegation to the United States of America (USA), disclosed this to the Daily Graphic in an interview at a joint luncheon organised by the Helping Africa Foundation (HAF) and the Yale Alumni Association in New York.
Vision
He said the Ghana Prisons Service had a vision to build a world-class service to enable it to attain excellence in correctional management.
Rev. Dr Wengam said the service was committed to ensuring that prisoners lived in safe custody, received humane treatment and were rehabilitated to come out as responsible, productive and law-abiding citizens to ensure public safety.
According to him, it had become necessary to rebrand the service to live up to its vision, mission and mandate.
Infrastructure
The chairman indicated that the general infrastructure of the prisons in the country were not the best as it lacked adequate space, leading to severe overcrowding and unhygienic conditions.
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"Again, the excessive pressure brought to bear on the existing structures has made it impossible for any meaningful classification of inmates as per the United Nations Standard minimum rules for the treatment of prisoners thus leading to the worrying situation where remands and convicts are mixed up in virtually all the walled prisons in Ghana", he said.
Rev. Dr Wengam noted that the service required huge investment to make its operations reformative, humane and productive to meet the aspirations of the country.
He, therefore, appealed to civil society organisations, institutions and philanthropists to support the board to make its fundraising initiative, the Efiase project, a success.