The Interior Minister-designate, Mohammed Mubarak Muntaka, is advocating for a change in how ex-convicts are perceived in society, calling for an end to the stereotype that is attached to them.
The fact that one has gone to a prison, according to the Minister-designate, does not make him a different breed of human, reemphasising the need for society to accept such persons after serving their sentencing.
Appearing before the Appointments Committee of Parliament Friday, January 24, 2025, the Member of Parliament for Asawase in the Ashanti region averred that the President had indicated in the NDC’s 2024 Manifesto that the name itself needed to be changed to alter the perception of people about those who go through the system.
This, in Muntaka’s words, is the surest means people’s mindset on ex-convicts would change.
“I am going to pay a lot of attention to the Ghana Prisons Service as part of the team member. If you look at the NDC’s manifesto, one of the things H.E. John Dramani Mahama’s vision was to even change the name from prisons to corrections so that even the mindset may begin to change,” he said at his vetting in Parliament.
He cited case studies in other jurisdictions where it has worked that persons who are incarcerated come back reformed due to the training they are given in there.
The lawmaker stated that they enter into public private partnership to put up facilities at the prisons where inmates are undertaken through training to get them reformed by the time they return to their families.
“There are so many examples that we can see around in the UK, Singapore and even our own neighbouring Singapore where they are using private public partnership to deal with most of the issues in the prisons,” he stated.
Atsu paid for fines for 113 inmates, established 46 of them – Assistant Dir. of Nsawam Prisons
