The NDC Spokesperson on security, Peter Lanchene Toobu, has disclosed intentions by the next National Democratic Congress government to rename the Ghana Prisons Service to Ghana Correctional Service.
Addressing the press on Tuesday, August 27, 2024, Peter Toobu, who is also the Member of Parliament for Wa West, explained that the proposed name change aims to shift the narrative and philosophy surrounding the prison service and convicted individuals.
“Changing the name is not a mere change in nomenclature. We are changing the philosophy of the prisons service that from 2025, when we convict people, we are going to send them to correctional centers and not prisons.
“I don’t want anybody in Ghana to go to a prison again, I want everybody to go to a correctional center that when we implement operation recover all loot and you are even jailed, we will send you to go and be corrected, be reformed,” he said.
The lawmaker further announced that a future NDC government plans to establish well quipped vocational and technical departments in all major prisons. This initiative, he said, aims to provide convicted individuals with opportunities for rehabilitation and to reduce recidivism.
“We are going to create well equipped technical and vocational department in all major prisons and that is the purpose. It’s a reform center and not a punishment center. At least deterrence is enough if you don’t even see your family but you dint go there and come back and become worse off.
“You go and steal a cow or a goat and you go back and come back and you graduate into an armed robber, that is not the way to go. We need to let that place be a correctional center so the change of name is the change of philosophy,” he stressed.
Watch the video on GhanaWeb TV below:
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