Captive justice: Ghana Prisons Service seeks donations amid corruption allegations
The Prisons Service Council and the Prisons Directorate are asking the public to help raise GH¢2 million to resolve the substandard conditions within the nation’s prisons.
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Titled Project Efiase, from the Akan word for “prison,” this ten-year fundraising programme is seeking philanthropic support from corporate and individual donors across Ghana, to both modernize the country's prisons and pilot new job-training initiatives for inmates.
Project Efiase will kick off 30th June, with a public exhibition called "50 years of Ghanaian Prisons," which will showcase inmate handicrafts and historical documents at the West Africa College of Physicians and Surgeons at North Ridge, Accra at 5:30 p.m. President John Mahama will be the guest of honour at the day's proceedings, and is expected to speak on the subject of prison reform.
"We want to showcase what the Prison Service is doing", said Lieutenant Vitalis Aiyeh, public relations officer (PRO) for the Ghana Prisons Service. The exhibit will feature Kente cloths produced by inmates, among other goods they have been trained to manufacture whilst incarcerated.
"The event will also raise consciousness about what more we can do with the help of corporate Ghana and public partnership", he added.
Project Efiase is timely given the well-documented state of overcrowding in Ghana’s prisons. The country’s 43 penal facilities were designed to house 9,000 inmates but today are buckling under the weight of more than 15,000. Prison inmates in Ghana also lack access to medical physicians, and are housed and fed for GH¢1.80 per day.
But according to a prison watchdog group, it will take more than money to fix the problems plaguing the Prisons Service.
"This [proposal] is just another platform to loot the state", said David Oscar, famed Ghanaian comedian and media figure, who handles public relations for Whispers Ghana, an NGO monitoring and documenting conditions in the country's prisons.
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"Yes, the Prisons Service's proposal encapsulates some of our shared goals with regard to decongesting the prisons. But in crafting solutions we need to look at this from the proper perspective", he explained.
In an interview with Graphic Online, Mr. Oscar described a prison system in which some inmates are able to bribe Prisons Service personnel for special treatment and contraband goods, including cell phones. He also stated that Whispers Ghana has learned that amnesties are essentially for sale to the highest bidders.
They have to sanitize the entire [justice] system.
David Oscar, entertainer and inmate advocate
"We need to sanitize the whole system, including the courts. They [the Prisons Service] have contributed to their own ails. How else could you possibly explain how some of these prisoners dwell in rooms of 50 or more… while others are living like kings…placing phone calls and planning further crimes from prison?"
Mr. Oscar added that there is also the need for serious judicial reforms, to clear the system of the thousands who are incarcerated on remand and awaiting trial, fully a quarter of the present prison population.
Working through a clandestine network of inmate informers, Whispers Ghana collects video and photos recorded by current inmates. The group runs Facebook and Instagram feeds, which they say are manifest evidence of the overcrowding and unsanitary conditions that pervade Ghana's prisons.
Whispers Ghana: Corruption is rampant
David Oscar explained that he entered the realm of inmate advocacy several months ago after meeting Mr. Christopher Boakye Amponsah, a former inmate, who was incarcerated for seven years on a conviction for cocaine trafficking. Through Amponsah, Oscar has learned that there is widespread corruption in Ghana's criminal justice system, both inside the prison walls and at the highest levels.
"I saw his story online, and I thought this was something very powerful we could share with others", he said.
"We want to move forward in truth", Mr. Amponsah said in an exclusive interview with Graphic Online. "You cannot come out of the prisons without speaking the truth."
"There are those in the system whose job it is to sell amnesties. There are what's called 'presidential pardons,' which are manipulated", he said. "Some of the few prisoners who benefit from this system have forgotten the prison population at large."
"If you are able to survive this experience, I believe it is your mandate to try to educate others", he said.
Christopher Boakye Amponsah was an inmate at the Nsawam Medium Security Prison for seven years. He now collects footage from inside Ghana's prison through a clandestine network of informants.
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Outdated facilities, overstretched logistics
Mr. Solomon Appiah, Member of the 6th Prisons Council, wrote in an essay submitted to Graphic Online that the current state of the country’s prisons has many root causes.
"For starters, infrastructure is a huge challenge," he said, explaining that renovating the country's aging, crumbling penal facilities should be a high priority in any bid to tackle acute prison congestion.
Of Ghana's 43 prisons, only three were purpose-built to serve as penal facilities.
"The Yeji Camp Prison, for example, began its life as an abandoned clinic. The Winneba Prison was formerly a warehouse dating back to the colonial era. The Koforidua Prison also served as an armory in colonial times", Mr. Appiah wrote.
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He said another major problem is stymied logistics. A popular proposal to improve the nutrition of inmates is to grow crops on the thousands of acres surrounding the prisons, including those gifted by the Ministry of Agriculture. Mr. Appiah wrote that a lack of staff and resources means that the Agricultural Division of the Prisons Service is largely nominal.
"Vehicles are needed to convey prisoners to and from the farms, but the Prisons Service lacks operational vehicles to do this.
"Second, even if the vehicles were available, prison officers at the moment are not well armed for extensive escort duties. Farming on a large-scale requires tractors and other farming machinery as well as irrigation equipment. The Prisons Service is undoubtedly, bereft of these as well."
Moreover, since the Prisons Service lacks storage facilities, "the vast majority [of crops] would probably rot", he wrote.
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The Prisons Council claims that these problems notwithstanding, the Service currently cultivates close to 1,000 acres of the land surrounding its facilities with prison labour, a claim which Whispers Ghana found dubious.
"As far as we now, if there are any agricultural products available, it is insignificant", said Mr. Oscar.
Mr. Appiah also wrote that much of the equipment used for job skills training also lies derelict or broken.
Success stories?
In his essay, Mr. Appiah highlighted many bright spots of the Prisons Service, several of which Whispers Ghana countered in an interview with Graphic Online.
Since President Mahama took office, Mr. Appiah wrote, the Prisons Service has tripled its budget for feeding inmates, from GH¢0.60 to GH¢1.80.
Former inmate Amponsah stated that, irrespective of budget, the food in Ghana's prisons is prepared under unsanitary conditions, with inmates being forced to prepare banku by mixing cassava and corn with their bare feet in open courtyards. He pointed to a recent photograph on the Whispers Ghana Instagram feed, showing a veritable mountain of uneaten banku in the trash, as evidence that prisoners avoid the food served if they can.
"Anyone that can afford to have their own meals brought to them [from family or friends] does so already", Mr. Oscar said.
In his essay, Mr. Appiah also wrote that thanks to donations from the Ghana Education Trust Fund, there are school blocks for inmates who wish to acquire formal education. The Wa Central Prison education block is complete, he wrote, while that of Nsawam Prison is 85% complete. He added that in 2014, the prisoners who sat for BECE and WASSCE had a 100% pass.
"From what we have heard, only a handful of prisoners take advantage of these programs," said Mr. Amponsah.
Mr. Appiah wrote that there are also ICT Centres in all the Central Prisons in Ghana for inmates to upgrade their job skills. From his experience as a former inmate of the Nsawam Prison, Mr. Amponsah countered that the ICT centre was frequently plagued by equipment shortages and faults.
Through collaboration with the Ghana government, the British High Commission recently gave a grant of GB£485,000 to the Ghana Prisons Service. Part of the grant was spent in procuring two new buses for the Service, renovating sections of the Nsawam Medium Security Prison as well as constructing a court near the prison facility, which the Prisons Service hopes will support greater judicial expediency.
Project Efiase, leading the way forward
The public relations plan behind Project Efiase opens with the Akan proverb, "It is only when you 'sell' your disease, that you find a cure." In the proposal, the Prisons Service admits that overcrowding in Ghana's prisons have turned these facilities into incubators of communicable diseases, and a breeding ground for hardened criminals.
"Less hardened prisoners receive training in crime by association with more hardened criminals, and upon their release may unleash their new skills on society", quotes the proposal.
In the first phase of the project, the Prisons Service aims to remind and educate the general public on the function of prisons, and how the current "deplorable state of affairs in Ghanaian Prisons" has negative implications for society.
The subsequent phase of the programme will seek to demonstrate how positive change can be made with improved funding and resources. This will culminate in the establishment of the Efiase Fund, to collect and manage philanthropic donations, to be monitored and evaluated by an as yet unnamed independent body. In the final stage of the campaign, the Prisons Service will highlight the successes of the programme.
To fund Project Efiase, the Prisons Service Council requires 10 non-media corporate institutions in Ghana to support the project, with each ideally donating GH¢200,000. In addition to media and public relations opportunities, each sponsoring company will receive special commendation from President Mahama at a ball gala launching the Efiase Fund.
President Mahama to visit the prisons
President Mahama has pledged his support for Project Efiase, which Mr. Appiah wrote on behalf of the Prisons Service is a sure signal of the government’s preparedness to top up whatever monies raised from the public.
On 3 July, President Mahama will visit two prisons in Ghana, making him the first sitting president of Ghana to make such a visit. According to Lieutenant Aiyeh, the President wishes to acclimatize himself with the conditions in the country's prisons firsthand.
And David Oscar thinks it would do the President a lot of good to remember that inmates have the right to vote in Ghana.
"Yes, the prisoners may represent a small voting bloc, but when it comes to calculating a majority, that deciding vote could be cast by a prisoner", Mr. Oscar said.
"It's not a far-fetched possibility", he added.
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