Owerri – The Nigerian Prisons Service (NPS) has called for an enhanced synergy among law enforcement agencies in the country, for better service delivery in terms of security of lives and property.
The Controller of Prisons, Imo State Command, Mr Chris Okoye, made the call while addressing the monthly general meeting of the Association of Heads of Federal Establishments (AHOFE), Imo Chapter, in Owerri on Friday.
The address is titled “Custody and Reformation of Law Breakers- the Role of Nigerian Prisons Service.”
He observed that the various security agencies have pursued mandates as if they were on their own.
“One of the most traumatising truisms of contemporary law enforcement in Nigeria is that law enforcement agencies do not collaborate in the discharge of their duties.
“This lack of synergy arises from ignorance on the part of the operatives of the role of the agencies in terms of contribution to national security, growth and development.
“This fact has led to many law enforcement officers and entire society having distorted view of the prisons and what it does, leading to a departure from aberrant implementation and crime control policies,” he said.
Okoye described the prisons as the end point of security of any state, which had been in the vanguard of securing lives and property and a major organ in the criminal justice system of the state.
According to him, Nigeria prison is an institution that takes into custody convicted offenders for the purpose of reforming and returning them to the society as law abiding citizens.
He said the service in Imo, in addition to securing all manner of criminals, was under mandate to make them law abiding citizens, in order for them to be re-integrated into the society on discharge.
Okoye said they achieve this through the instrument of vocational, educational, recreational, medical, counseling, psychological and after-care services, thereby playing the role of a social recovery institution.
He identified other roles of the service to include safe custody, deterrence, protection and reformation.
The controller said that the reformation and rehabilitation programmes of the prisons were designed to equip inmates with skills, education and vocation that would help them settle down on discharge.
He identified some of their constraints to include infrastructure, congestion among the awaiting trial persons, logistics, slow dispensation of justice and paucity of funds.
“The prison service has faced the problem of funding of its development programmes by the government. This has retarded its speed of growth and progress in recent times,” he said.
Okoye noted that Alhaji Ja’afaru Ahmed, Controller General of Prisons, had tried to address some of the teething constraints by building new prisons, new cell blocks and provision of operational vehicles.
“The aim is to improve the prison infrastructure and human resource development; but a lot still needs to be done to ameliorate almost a century of neglect of the prisons service,” he said.
(NAN)