Executive Director of Crime Check Foundation, Ibrahim Oppong Kwarteng
Mr Ibrahim Oppong Kwarteng, the Executive Director of Crime Check Foundation, a Crime Prevention and Advocacy Organisation, has commended the leadership of the Church of Pentecost for putting up the Ejura Camp Prison for the Ghana Prisons Service.
Mr Kwarteng, who is also an Ambassador Extraordinaire of Prisons, in an interview with Ghana News Agency, said it was one of the magnificent prison facility and comparable to those in Europe and the Americans.
He said these were the types of facility that the country should have for inmates.
The Church of Pentecost constructed the fully furnished three dormitory blocks with the capacity to accommodate 300 inmates.
The facility also has an administration block, a chapel which will also serve as a classroom, football pitch, baptistery, modern washrooms, mechanized borehole, offices, infirmary, workshops, and other auxiliary facilities.
The facility, which was jointly commissioned by Mr Ambrose Dery, Interior Minister, and the Chairman of The Church of Pentecost, Apostle Eric Nyamekye, is to help decongest the country’s prisons.
He said the Church had truly demonstrated the biblical admonition to mankind to make life better for the incarcerated.
Mr Kwarteng said the facility was a purely correctional facility and prisoners were not supposed to be treated like animals but rather they were supposed to be treated with utmost care and live-in facilities that were not congested.
The Executive Director said some researchers held that when a criminal was treated with utmost care and love, it would go a long way to rehabilitate and reform them.
He said there were some theories upheld strongly by prison authorities in the past that isolation and punishment were key in reforming and rehabilitating prisoners.
Mr Kwarteng, however, said that concept was overthrown and found to be ineffective and counterproductive and also it hardened prisoners.
He said the good thing about the facility was that it had a skills training department to aid the inmates acquire some skills to help them reintegrate into society when they were finally released.
Mr Kwarteng advised those, who want to commit a crime just to get into the facility, “do not forget that no matter how beautiful a prison is, you will still suffer the psychological consequences of imprisonment.”
“Do not also forget that your three square meals a day is GH¢1.80p and it is always better to stay away from trouble,” he added.