Home Affairs Minister Robeson Benn today encouraged senior officers of the Guyana Prison Service (GPS) to pay keen attention to the rehabilitation of male prisoners.
They make up a significant portion of offenders within the correctional system.
Benn urged the GPS to help instill self-respect and confidence in male inmates while exhibiting fair and humane treatment to ensure their competence in social rehabilitation post-imprisonment.
Speaking at the GPS senior officers’ conference, which opened under the theme “Changing Mindsets and Culture for Corrections” at the Police Officers’ Mess, Eve Leary, Georgetown, Minister Benn said menfolk play a pivotal role in society, including care and provision for their families.
“When they leave the prison system and they are trained, they should have the tools to get into immediate employment or the skills to do so, and they will earn better self-respect. They will be better able to support their families… and not fall back into drugs and bad behaviour,” Benn told senior officers, dignitaries, and operational partners.
He also told prison officers that he does not accept cruelty to prisoners, as the inmates will only return the favour. Specifically, the Home Affairs Minister denounced the “beating” of prisoners, urging that this defeats the purpose of rehabilitation as it demoralises inmates.
Those ranks who engage in physical abuse may themselves be in need of rehabilitation or should be expunged from the force for lacking morality and decency towards the inmates.
Benn noted, therefore, that male officers should be an example to male prisoners, highlighting the numerous odds stacked against them, including a historical culture of division that still impacts today’s society, poverty, and other factors that negate the belief and self-worth men have in themselves.
“If we are talking about changing culture and mindsets, it now speaks to the important issue of people. How do we treat people—many young, mostly men? I think the percentage of women in prison in Guyana is only three per cent… so it speaks to the problem we have in our country of we men—who we are, what we do, how we view people, how we view women and children, whether we protect them. Those are the challenges, and men, we have to work on us,” the minister posited.
Benn emphasised the need for male correctional officers to be an example to the more than 2,000 males within the penal system who may have faced numerous challenges that would have caused them to be on the wrong side of the law.
He insisted that prisoners were not born to break the law and urged continued efforts to rehabilitate and reintegrate these citizens back into society.
