Junior Girls Correctional Centre cries for help
The Junior Girls Correctional Centre in Accra has appealed to the public to support it with training materials.
This is to enable it to train the girls committed to serve time at the centre to reform them.
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The Manageress of the centre, Mrs Gifty Tekpor, who made the appeal in an interview in Accra mentioned some of the materials urgently needed to include fabrics, beads and sewing machines.
The centre, which is under the Department of Social Welfare, is where females between the ages of 12 to 17 years old who have committed crimes such as stealing, robbery, assault, drugs, abetment of crime and any other form of crime which is against the laws of the country are sent to by the courts to serve their terms of detention which normally range from six months to three years.
It is the only centre of its kind for girls in the whole country and according to Mrs Tekpor, it has children from all over the country.
“The girls brought to the centre are among others offered training of their choice in hairdressing, fashion and designing, catering and bead making.
Because of this, we need enough training materials because their absence, makes it difficult to train the girls.
These are children below 17 years who have come into conflict with the law and they have been committed into our care to protect them so the general public should come and help us to reform them,” she said.
Mrs Tekpor added that the centre also needed a showroom to enable the girls to exhibit their end products adding that, despite the challenges that confront it, the centre is able to reform about 99 per cent of the girls committed to serve terms of detention there.
She said because of this training offered the girls, in addition to periodic counselling by psychologists invited to the centre; buying and reading story books to them; churches sharing the Word of God with them and giving them the best treatment, some of the girls don’t want to leave after they finish serving their terms.
“When they come here, we do our best to give them their basic needs which they were not getting on the streets where they committed those crimes which brought them here.”
Mrs Tekpor mentioned other challenges of the centre to include the lack of a vehicle to help them in their operations, explaining that the only vehicle the centre used to have, had long broken down.
As a result, it hired taxis to run all errands such as transporting the children to and from the hospital when they were sick, looking for them when they abscond from the centre and going to the market to make purchases.
She, therefore, appealed to well-meaning Ghanaians and institutions to come to the aid of the centre.
She also appealed to the families of girls who had been committed by the courts to serve various months and years of detention to pay the maintenance fee they were expected to pay to the Department of Social Welfare for the upkeep of their children at the centre and also regularly visit the children to make them feel wanted.
The law on maintenance fee
Unlike adults in prisons where government takes care of their upkeep, for minors, the Juvenile Justice Act 2003 Section 58 (Contributions by Parents of Juveniles) subsection (1) states that: Where a court makes an order for the detention of an offender in a centre, the court may further order that the parent, guardian or other person responsible for the offender shall pay to the Department of Social Welfare such contribution towards the cost of maintaining the offender in the centre during the period of detention as the court thinks reasonable after due enquiry and having regard to the means of the parent, guardian or other person.
Advice
She advised parents of the girls committed to detention at the centre not to give up on the girls there and also not to think that because they were on detention there, it meant the end of their lives.
“They are at a place that will help them reform so you should not give up on them or abandon them.
You should forgive them of what they did that ended them here, visit them, provide for their basic needs and support the home to take care of them and through that we will get them reformed,” she urged.
Chat with detained girls
Some of the girls appealed for support for the centre.
One of them, a 16-year-old girl from Bolgatanga in the Upper East region, who has been committed to serve three years detention on drug-related charges, said they did not have fabrics and sewing machines to assist them with the training they received at the centre.
She, therefore, appealed for help.
She said because of the training she had received at the centre, she could now sew baby bibs and dresses.
Another girl, a 13-year-old from Madina in Accra who was committed in 2019 to serve three years detention at the centre, said the beads used to teach them beading were finished and so had the fabrics.
She said if they were able to get enough of those things for their training, they would have something meaningful to do and discourage them from the life that landed them at the centre.
