Vocational training to overhaul mentality:

Prisoners tend to be jailbirds

Dharma SRI ABEYRATNE

Around 135,000 people are sent to prisons annually and an equal number is discharged from the prisons annually. However, normally 25,000 to 30,000 prisoners are in prisons throughout the year. Re-offenders are the major reasons for the congestion in prisons.

According to prison statistics the rate of re-offenders is 50 percent.

It has been identified that some have become jailbirds as 60 percent of prisoners have come to prisons more than three times while a few number has come more than ten times, Rehabilitation and Prison Reforms Minister DEW Gunasekara said.

The Rehabilitation and Prison Reforms Ministry will conduct several vocational training programs for prisoners to arrest this situation, the Minister said. These vocational training programs will pave the way for prisoners to start self-employment or they can join any institution as skilled employees after being released from prisons.

It has been revealed that most of the prisoners will face severe financial hardships as they are unskilled labourers who have not undergone vocational trainings.

Therefore the Ministry will conduct several vocational training programs which are in demand in the job market.

Under this prisoners will undergo vocational training such as plumbing, masonry, carpentry, farming and so on.

"The Ministry will give opportunities to prisoners to earn money by engaging in self employment. The earnings will be deposited in bank accounts of the respective prisoners.

"Moreover they will have a certain amount of money when they leave prisons."

Minister Gunasekara said there is an acute congestion in prisons as there are around 25,000 inmates in prisons though the prisons can cater to only 11,000 inmates. There are more than 400 prisoners in wards where there should be only 100 prisoners.

Of the prisoners 60 percent are convicted prisoners while the balance 40 percent are remand prisoners. Around 10 percent have never attended school while 60 percent have not reached even grade eight. Around 70 percent are between the age limit of 20 and 40. Drug addicts and drug smugglers are also in prison. The percentage of drug related offenders is 40 percent, the Minister added.

"It is significant that the bulk of re-offenders are not educated," he said.

In other words there is a link between education and committing crimes regularly. The Ministry will conduct educational programs for prisoners in the near future," Minister Gunasekara said.