A reformed ex-convict, Nana Kwaku Kodua has raised serious concerns about prison conditions and urged the government to take a critical look at some dubious activities and practices gaining grounds at the confinement centre.
The ex-convict in an interview with host of Abusua FM’s late afternoon drive time show, Ike De-Unpredictable said claims that prisons are meant to reform criminals are mere rhetoric and that worse things are happening there.
“Our prisons are training hardened criminals instead of serving as a reformation centers,” he said.
Nana Kodua tells Ike,” it is just by divine intervention that some prisoners come out reformed, largely due to the voluntary counseling some of us submit ourselves to and administer by some pastors, who often visit the prisons to share the word of God, and not because we had any kind of support from the Ghana Prison Service.”
“We are made to eat awful meals, which leave us wondering if the meals were a form of punishment that is commensurate to our prison sentence.”
Nana Kwaku Kodua served over three years for a little misunderstanding with a woman. Nana Kwaku Kodua adds, “the overcrowding in some of the prisons I was transferred to across the country is particularly severe.”
“If there is inadequate food, if there is inadequate medical treatment, if there are unsanitary conditions in the prisons, can anyone insist this is a place for reformation, he asked.
“We are subjected inhuman and degrading treatment on daily basis and in violation of our human rights,” he said.
“You will dismayed to see that there are canes in the prisons…, prison leaders are always brandishing canes and threatening any inmates with full authority and support of the prison authorities,” Kwaku Kodua revealed.
The ex-convict says sanitary conditions at the various prison installations are deteriorating as about one thousand inmates at the detention centres use only three water closets.
“Inmates queue for long hours to attend to nature’s call, a situation which sometimes compel us to defecate on ourselves or in polythene bags…there are times the water doesn’t flow for us to flash off the toilets and so we are forced to use our hands to push the toilets away for others to be able to use it,” he said.
This is very appalling to hear but I believe it is exactly what the Vice President,His Excellency Dr. Bawumiah has already demanded from the new head of the prisons service. I believe this new government is more concerned about this very problem so we should keep on reminding them.