INTERIOR MINISTER MEETS PRISON REGIONAL COMMANDERS (Page 24)

May 19 2010

Story: Mary Mensah
The Minister of the Interior, Mr Martin A. B. K Amidu, has stated that the oil find in the country places enormous task on the Prisons Service to ensure the safe custody of the incarcerated as a means of discouraging criminal conduct in the country.
He said the benefits of operating in a safe environment, to the prospective and honest foreign investor, cannot be ignored.
The minister, who was opening the Prisons Regional Commanders conference on the theme: “ Keeping Pace with Modern Penal Administration: Challenges Ahead”, in Accra yesterday, said as key partner in the criminal justice system, the service had the responsibility to enhance its contribution towards ensuring public safety.
He also stressed the need for a critical assessment of the security situation in all the country’s prisons to forestall prison breaks from recurring.
He said the recent jailbreak at the Sekondi Central Prisons, which led to the seizure of weapons and the escape of 10 prisoners, had brought to the fore the challenges the prison service faced in contributing to public safety.
Mr Amidu said criminality had assumed a high level of sophistication and therefore was imperative to hasten to adapt to the changing trends, adding that this called for a review of the human resource development and other training policies to equip the officers to cope with the enormous task on hand.
He asserted that over-crowding in the prisons had reached alarming proportions and the inmate population was over 13, 500 as against an authorised capacity of 7, 875 prisoners.
This situation, he said, was not acceptable to the President of Ghana and it was against this backdrop that the government was pushing for early completion of the Ankaful Maximum Security Prisons. The facility under construction has a capacity to take 2,000 high risk prisoners to ease congestion in other prisons.
He said remand prisoners formed 26 per cent of the inmate population, thus worsening the over-crowding problem and the government was again committed to the “ Justice for All Programme”, which is expected to reduce to, at least, half of the remand prison population by July 2010.
Mr Amidu indicated that the establishment of prisons settlement camps to take custody of low risk prisoners was a priority for the government and would be pursued in earnest.
“ The constitutional injunction of justice and respect for human rights, especially the rights of inmates, demands of you to be circumspect in the treatment of the inmates in custody, ” he said.
He assured the officers and men of the service of the government’s continued commitment to building the capacity of the service to cope with the changing trends in penal administration world-wide.
The Acting Director General of Prisons, Mr Michael Kofi Bansah, said it was evident now that the type of prisoners in custody called for a more sophisticated approach to their handling.
He said the recent jailbreak at the Sekondi Central Prisons drew attention the need to look at the current prison structures, which are colonial vestiges from the 19th Century.
He said it also called for an improvement in the preparation and training of prison staff for intelligence and security duties adding that as a human institution mistakes were bound to occur.
Mr Bansah indicated that a new wind was blowing over Africa and African prisons and correction institutions were searching for better ways to improve on their delivery with the aim of assisting their societies to control crime and improve on the economic and political environment.