Tamale, March, 3, GNA - Mr. Samuel Ashitey Adjei, Chairman of the Prisons Service Council has observed that there were many challenges facing the Prisons Service today, citing deplorable conditions, deteriorating infrastructure and overcrowding as some of the conditions jeopardising the lives of inmates.

He said the primary and principal purpose of the prisons is to serve as reformation centres to reform prisoners rather than hardening them.

Mr. Adjei made the observations when he inaugurated a 9-member Northern Region Prisons Committee, chaired by the Northern Regional Minister, Alhaji Mustapha Ali Idris in Tamale on Friday. He said the Ghana Prisons Council was committed to ensuring that some level of improvement at the country's prisons. "We are working to introduce initiatives to help to address these problems", he pointed out, saying: "our objective is to help make the reintegrated of prisoners back into the community very meaningfully". Mr. Adjei therefore tasked the Regional Prisons Committee to work to transform prisoners into their communities to contribute their quota to national development.

Alhaji Idris gave the assurance that the Committee would work hard to improve conditions at the prisons. 03 March 07