Transforming prisons in Ghana.The need to support ‘Project Efiase’
He was a Captain in the Ghana Army. One event led to the other. He was taken as guest of the state.
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There, he faced the full rigours of prison life, ranging from the poor quality of food, the impure water, the overcrowded and non-ventilated accommodation to the maltreatment by other inmates.
While in prison, he took a decision to donate his wealth to the care of orphans and neglected children at the Countryside Children’s Home at Bawjiase.
In appreciation of the kind gesture, the children sought to know the unknown donor by visiting him in prison.
Afterwards, they wrote a letter to the Head of State (it was a military government) to temper justice with mercy. Their plea saw the light of day and he was freed.
Captain Adusei Adu (retd), my subject, made the commitment to live and work for the orphanage. He told me, when I visited him at the orphanage, that after his release from prison, he lost his sight.
This touching story tells us that all is not well with the conditions in the country’s prisons, a potential home for any person at any time.
The Figures
Records show that there are 43 prison facilities in the country, with an Authorised Holding Capacity (AHC) of 9,875. However, the current prison population is more than 15,000. Out of this number, an estimated 12,000 of the inmates are convicted prisoners while the remaining 3,000 are not.
The age distribution of the prison population shows that an estimated 70 per cent of the inmates are aged between 18 and 45. More than 900 of the inmates are second-term prisoners.
From the figures, one can conclude that Ghana has a very youthful prison population. One will also wonder why more than 900 people are second-time prisoners.
With the AHC of the prisons being bloated by some 6,000 inmates, how are these extra prisoners catered for in terms of feeding, accommodation, access to space and other basic necessities of life?
Conditions in our prisons
A visit to the Nsawam Medium Security Prisons, the largest in the country, paints a picture of the dehumanising conditions prisoners go through. The facility, established in 1960 with a capacity of 851, currently houses more than 3,500 inmates.
A breakdown of the figures at the time of my visit on Friday, March 11, 2015, shows that 2,900 of the inmates have been convicted, 378 are on remand, 91 are facing life imprisonment, while 131 are on death roll (condemned cells).
The female prison, commissioned on December 17, 1973 with a capacity of 200, also had 87 inmates.
The congestion in this prison is a fair reflection of the situation in other prison establishments. The Kumasi Prison, for instance, was built to accommodate 450 inmates but it currently houses 2,500 of them.
Only three of the 43 prison facilities were purpose-built, while the others are relics of the colonial masters such as dungeons and forts.
The congestion has led to the ‘survival of the fittest’ syndrome as the prisoners compete for virtually everything; space, oxygen, food, water and other scarce facilities.
This unfortunate situation exposes the inmates to communicable diseases, which in turn puts the lives of the prison officers and public at risk.
The least said about the quality of food for the prisoners, the better. They are currently fed on GH¢1.80 per head per day due to low budgetary allocation from the government.
The Chairman of the Sixth Prison Service Council (PSC) Board, Rev. Dr Stephen Wengham, told me in an interview that 90 per cent of the budgetary allocation from the government for 2016 is for feeding, with the remaining 10 per cent for other management services.
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“Currently, we have 5,000 prison officers, excluding their wives and children. But only a third of these officers have access to some sub-standard accommodation. How can their welfare be better under these conditions?”
“Can you imagine that in this 21st century officers have to bus inmates to and from court in public transport? How they are able to ensure that the inmates do not escape is only a miracle,” he added.
The Eastern Regional Commander and Officer in Charge (OIC) of the Nsawam Prisons, Deputy Director of Prisons (DDP) Isaac K. Egyir, piled up on the position of Dr Wengham when he cited logistic constraints, low feeding grants, poor access to water and poor health care services among other daunting challenges at the facility.
Experts say that people are imprisoned mainly to reform them, deter others from replicating the crime, give the public peace and to rehabilitate them.
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With these daunting challenges in the prisons, how will the Ghana Prison Service (GPS) be able to reform, rehabilitate and reintegrate these inmates perfectly into society?
Project Efiase
It is said that a problem, once identified, is half-way solved. The PSC Board, last year, launched “Project Efiase” to respond to the urgent need to improve upon the conditions in the prisons.
“Efiase” is the Akan word for “prison”. “Project Efiase” is a self-help initiative by the PSC Board to raise funds from individuals, corporate bodies and other philanthropists to help implement a 10-year development plan aimed at improving the conditions in the prisons.
The three-phase project is expected to raise GH¢25 million every year to expand infrastructure, equip the skills training centres in the prisons with modern tools and equipment, improve the welfare of the inmates and prison officers, and build a hospital to cater for the health needs of the prisoners.
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The passion and seriousness with which Dr Wengham spoke when I visited him at his Cedar Mountain Assemblies of God outfit shows that the team he leads is determined to give our prisons a facelift.
“I visited Colorado State Prison at the instance of the United States (US) government and I was surprised at the state of their prisons. The industries the prisons owned earned them $65 million a year. The state has a policy which mandates only the prisons to print number plates and all books used by public schools. This is a nice initiative that can be replicated here so that the GPS can generate some money to supplement the scanty allocation from the government,” he said.
The expression “everybody is a potential candidate of prison” has become a cliché in the country. It is important to note that prison is everybody’s second home. There are people who came out of the prison and rose to greatness.
The first President of Ghana, Dr Kwame Nkrumah, was given the accolade “prison graduate” because he came out of prison and became the messiah of the country.
It is important to commit resources as individuals, corporate bodies and institutions of state to transform the prisons. For, as Dr Wengham put it, “prisons are supposed to play a critical role in our national development to ensure public safety. If people are incarcerated and are not properly refined and reintegrated into society, nobody is safe.”
Your widow’s mite into the “Kitiwa Bia Nsua” Ecobank account number 0010084415563401 could be the little forest that would save a life.