Kumasi based Ghanaian ex-convict, Osei Frank has expressed deep concern and worry about that the high level of ‘forced sex’ by some senior prisoners in the Kumasi Central prison in the Ashanti Region.
According to Mr. Osei, prisoners between the ages of 17-18 mostly lack financial support from their families and due to the starvation level in the cells, they are forced to exchange anal sex with their senior inmates to survive.
Speaking in an interview with Krobea Nana Yaw Asante on Otec Fm, Mr Osei noted that, some of the prisoners sell marijuana in the cells, same reason I was detained, I’m not scared disclosing the secret. Some of the prisoners even engage in mobile money business, some are very rich and are able to send money to their families outside, they use same opportunity to lure sex from most of the young inmates, especially those who are handsome”.
He said, old prisoners who are hungry for sex engage their fellow male inmates in carnal sex.
Mr. Osei Frank also revealed how the least amount of money means a lot to the ordinary prisoner because of their financial status and that of their families.
Drug business, according to him, is flourishing where he served his jail term in Kumasi. Daring prisoners, he continued, who go out with officers for manual work, sneak out, buy drugs, especially marijuana, wrap and stick them in their anus; the only convenient way they can smuggle them into the cells. He implied that apart from your freedom that is denied, life in Ghana prisons is like living in hell.
He said, “The food you are given in the prison isn’t food that you eat at home; it is food that is cooked by prison canons” The ex-convict who served 5years for smoking one stick of marijuana by the roadside said, “We are allowed to smoke 'weed' and use other hard drugs as officers and convicts are the dealers in those drugs”.
Homosexuality
The issue of homosexuality in prisons is disturbing. Our society frowns on homosexuality as the Ghanaian culture has no space to house it. The situation is not different in our prisons as prisons are but just an extension of society.
Conjugal visits are not allowed in Ghanaian prisons as pertains elsewhere and so inmates during their prison sentence have no access to the opposite sex. Until our regulations are amended, all forms of sexual relationships between inmates remain an illegality.
