Prison survey to commence next month - Ramjattan

Prison survey to commence next month – Ramjattan

Aug 26, 2016 News

With the aim of designing rehabilitation and social reintegration services for inmates, a nationwide prison survey is expected to begin next month, according to Minister of Public Security, Khemraj Ramjattan.
Ramjattan made this disclosure at the launch of the Citizen Security Strengthening Programme (CSSP) on Wednesday.
The CSSP was introduced to improve behaviour for non-violent conflict resolution in selected communities, which will contribute to the overall aim of the programme – to contribute to the reduction of crime and violence within the country.
The information from the prison survey will be a key indicator to the CSSP, since it will reveal the areas where more focus is needed, troubled communities, and the reasons for persons being incarcerated among other issues.
The survey will be funded by the Inter-American Development Bank to the value of US$2.3 million, through the CSSP.
According to the Minister, the aim of the survey is to gather information on the experiences of the lives of inmates prior to their incarceration, during imprisonment and those of repeat offenders.
“We are going to seek information as to the background of each of the inmates, who are going to answer questionnaires,” Ramjattan pointed out.
He said that while some prisoners might not want to complete the questionnaire, the authority is hoping that the ones who will take part, would provide an understanding of the circumstances that caused them to be incarcerated.
“We want to get down to understanding when they came what were their circumstances, where they came from, so that we can have a complete picture of these inmates and their backgrounds,” the Minister said.
He explained that this will help the authority to make a better assessment as to what programmes can be implemented to assist the inmates.
Kaieteur News was informed that the data-capturing period is expected to last six weeks, with a preliminary report expected by the end of November. The final report is expected at the end of April 2017.
According to Ramjattan, the data collection will be implemented by the Tres de Febrero University of Argentina, in collaboration with the University of Guyana.
This newspaper understands that the University of Guyana’s role would be to capture the data, while the Tres de Febrero University’s role is to analyze the data, and prepare as well as compile the report.
The survey has more than 200 indicators.
The nationwide prison survey comes several months after a tragedy at the Camp Street prison which claimed the lives of 17 inmates.

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