Three new prison centres would be built in three regions of Ghana to help de-congest the prisons as part of the government's prisons reform initiative, Dr Kwame Addo Kufuor, Minister of Defence and responsible for the Interior said on Monday.
"We also want to promote investment into the prison sector and encourage the establishment of satellite prisons to cater for shorter sentences." Dr Addo Kufuor said this when Alhaji Ibrahim Mohammed Jarma, Nigerian Controller-General of Prisons paid a courtesy call on him at his office in Accra.
He said the beneficiary regions were most likely to be the Northern, Brong-Ahafo and the Central Regions. Dr Addo-Kufuor said the government was pre-occupied with the decongestion of the prisons, the provision of workshops to adequately train the inmates and improving their access to health care.
He said since Ghana and Nigeria shared similar problems regarding prisons, there was the need for co-operation to overcome the problems. The Acting Interior Minister noted that even though Ghana's prison reforms were on a modest scale, government would continue to do more in that direction.
Alhaji Jarma said the Nigerian strategy was to open up the situation of the prisons to public scrutiny and that made the government and the public to see the need to improve the situation.
He said as a result the Nigerian government released 2.4 billion Naira out of which six new prisons and three full-fledged prisons' hospitals were established, adding that ambulances had been procured for the prisons and bedding and mattresses had been introduced.
Alhaji Jarma called for co-operation especially in the training of prison staff on the human rights of prison inmates. "We are already in league with some NGOs on education of wardens on how to deal with prisoners."
Alhaji Jarma said that at the moment Nigeria had 151 prisons and 79 satellite ones with about 45,000 inmates. Mr Richard Kuire, Director-General of Ghana Prisons, called for the harmonisation in the handling of prisoners between the two countries so that prisoners did not go back to crime when released.
He said meaningful changes could only be achieved if personnel were adequately trained to perform and stressed the need for an exchange programme for prison officers of Ghana and Nigeria.
