Measures To Check Sodomy In Prisons Underway

For the first time in the history of the Ghana Prisons Service, clinical psychologists have been employed to counsel prisoners on life in the prison and matters relating to health. The service has had psychologists and not clinical psychologists.

A reliable source told The Mirror that the Prison Service was also making every effort to provide quality entertainment programmes for the inmates to keep their minds off sex and other things that may harden their hearts against society.

In this regard, the service will soon acquire more television sets for prisons in the country.

Some prisoners, who cannot keep their legs closed or zips locked, have become homosexuals and lesbians who put themselves and other inmates at risk of contracting dangerous diseases such as HIV/AIDS.

The Mirror investigations have revealed that there are some prisoners who work in the cells as gay prostitutes in order to raise some money to meet their personal needs.

A source at the Prisons Headquarters in Accra told The Mirror in an interview that though the Prisons Service is aware of the activities of homosexuals and lesbians in the prisons, it has so far been difficult to control their activities since the inmates involved hide to engage in the acts.

The source said the service and indeed most of the prisoners themselves frown on homosexual activities and "those who are found to be involved are tried according to Prisons regulations. If found guilty, they are punished", the source said.

According to the source some homosexual prisoners influence the other inmates with money and other things in order to have sexual relations with them.

"The people who practise the act before they come into the prisons are known as predators. They usually find it difficult to control their sexual passions and sometimes attempt to coerce other people to sleep with them. Some inmates who felt threatened by the activities of some predators expressed their indignation by slashing the predators with sharp objects”.

The source said when the inmates see other prisoners locked up in a homosexual act they shout kpei, kpei, kpei to notify the Prison officers on duty as well as the rest of the prisoners that something “unholy” is going on. When the “culprits” are apprehended, the source said, they are sometimes molested by their peers on the blind side of the officers.

The source admitted that most of the inmates in the country’s prisons are young men and women who are sexually very active but pointed out that once in prison one could not have one’s way in life.

The source revisited suggestions made by some sections of the public that arrangements should be made by the Prison Service for prisoners to have sexual relations with their spouses periodically, saying they were worth debating. The source could not confirm or deny reports that some prison officers made arrangements for some influential and wealthy prisoners to have sexual relations with their partners.

The source appealed to society to lend the government and the Prisons Service a helping hand in their efforts to reform prisoners in the country, and also improve facilities in the country’s prisons. The appeal was principally directed at religious and corporate bodies in the country.

Meanwhile, statistics available at the Prisons Headquarters indicate that HIV/AIDS is the number two killer of prisoners in Ghana. It accounts for about 17.5 per cent of all prisoner deaths in the country; about 22 of the 125 deaths last year were caused by the disease. In the light of this the service is encouraging prisoners to undergo voluntary HIV tests to stem the spread of the disease in the prisons.

There have also been suggestions that all convicts should be tested before they are admitted into the prisons since some come in with the disease. Those who carry the virus may engage in homosexual activities in the cells, thus spreading the AIDS virus.

The statistics show that tuberculosis is the number one killer of prisoners. It claimed 26 lives last year, representing 20.6 per cent of total deaths. Other killer diseases in the prisons include anaemia, 15 per cent; pneumonia, 13 per cent; septicaemia, 11; hepatitis six and dehydration, five per cent.

Others are malaria fever, four per cent; congestive cardiac failure, four per cent; meningitis, three per cent; hypertension, renal failure and respiration failure, two per cent each. Asthma, cirrhosis of the liver, diabetes, epilepsy, haemoptisis, hernia, paralysis and cachexia each accounted for one per cent of prisoner deaths.