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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 prison service that from 2025 when we convict people, we are going to send them to correctional centres and not prisons.
“I don’t want anybody in Ghana to go to a prison again, I want everybody to go to a correctional centre that when we implement an operation to 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 departments in all major prisons and that is the purpose. It’s a reform centre and not a punishment centre. At least deterrence is enough if you don’t even see your family but you don’t 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 centre so the change of name is the change of philosophy,” he stressed.
ghanaweb.com
