By Nicholas Osei-Wusu
The Kumasi Central Prisons in the Ashanti region has appealed to well-meaning individuals, groups, and corporate organisations in society to come to the aid of the Reformation School at the Prisons with logistics and other materials necessary for the running of the school for eligible inmates of the facility.
In an interview with GBCNews in Kumasi, the Officer in Charge of Training and Education at the Kumasi Central Prisons, Superintendent Paul Nuobepour, assured that, with adequate logistical and other material assistance, the Reformation School has the prospect of using formal education to positively re-mould some of the prisoners who have availed themselves for formal basic and second cycle education following the excellent performance of previous candidates for the BECE and WASSCE presented by the School.
The Kumasi Central Prisons, being part of the Ghana Prison Service, has a statutory mandate not just to keep the prisoners in safe custody but, more importantly, to reform them using various techniques, including counselling, vocational skills training, to empower them to become very useful to themselves and the larger society upon their release.
Upon realising that some of the inmates are within the school-going age range from Junior High through Second Cycle school to trades acquisition, management of the Kumasi Central Prisons has introduced a formal school system called ‘Reformation School’ to provide both Junior and Senior High education to qualified and interested prison inmates at no monetary cost to them.
In an interview with GBCNews in Kumasi, the Officer in charge of Training and Education at the Kumasi Central Prisons, Superintendent Paul Nuobepour, disclosed that candidates presented by the School for the BECE, WASSCE, and even NVTI examinations have justified the setting up of the Reformation School based on their outstanding performances.
The School presented eight candidates for the just-ended BECE.
According to Superintendent Nuobepour, the school is the means of the management of the Prisons to positively reform the inmates to live productive lives upon their release, and the teachers are both prison officials and prison inmates with the requisite academic credentials with no specific dedicated resources as incentives.
The BECE candidates who qualify for second cycle education are enrolled in private Remedial Schools until they write the WASSCE, and their certificates are handed over to them upon completion of their incarceration tenure. But the management of the Prisons has a cause to worry with acute logistical constraints and space, for which Superintendent Nuobepour is making an appeal for benevolent individuals, groups, and corporate institutions to come to their aid with office logistics and building materials.
It is believed that the Reformation School of the Prisons offers one of the best reformation strategies to help mould the inmates into very useful members of society upon their release from imprisonment.