Prisons Service spends 75% allocation on inmates' feeding

Seventy-five per cent of funds allocated to the Ghana Prisons Service goes into feeding prisoners to the detriment of its planned projects including the provision of vocational training workshops.

The Public Relations Officer, Superintendent Solomon Antwi, is reported by the Times as saying that though officers in the service complained about the increasing number of inmates, judges persisted in remanding suspected criminals creating overcrowding in the Prisons and causing fluctuations in the budgets of the service.

The Ghanaian Times which carried the story, says it contacted the service to find out why prisons in the Northern part of the country has no workshops to give vocational training to the inmates.

Superintendent Antwi admitted that the machinery in the few workshops the service has nationwide had become obsolete and unusable, explaining that the primary purpose of rehabilitating criminals in the prisons was gradually becoming an illusion since most of the prisoners became a burden on society after they were discharged for lack of skills.

To that end, he directed all the Regional Commanders in the Prisons Service to identify simple and inexpensive raw materials in their respective regions so that the prisoners could be trained to use it to their benefit.

Mentioning cloth and basket weaving, dress and shoe making as major trades which could easily be taught in the prisons, Mr Antwi stated that the management of the service was determined to shift from using heavy and very expensive machines in training prisoners since "their spare-parts are very difficult to come by now a days".