Twenty inmates at the Makeni Correctional Centre have graduated with Certificate in Community Development.
Among this cohort, 18 are male and 2 females. This initiative would create a huge difference to many inmates especially those who could ordinarily struggle to access tertiary education in a country where higher learning is expensive.
It started at Kamiti Maximum Security Prison, Kenya wherein inmates are opportune to enroll for academic and professional courses at various universities to pursue their careers.
Willis Ochieng is one of such inmates at that time to enroll for a Law Degree. He graduated in 2019 and becomes a human rights defender.
Correctional Centre education and training if incorporated into Sierra Leone’s Correctional Service would contribute in changing lives and improving people’s futures, getting inmates onto the ladder of opportunity after jail term.
This type of education must play a key role in improving the employability of inmates and therefore in reducing reoffending when get into society.
However, such education must also be understood in broader terms than just improving the employability of these learners.
It must allow inmates to gain self-confidence and provides mental health benefits in isolating conditions, while improving their behaviours in correctional.
Education has a value in itself, developing the person as a whole.
Therefore, the government of Sierra Leone through Ministries of Higher and Technical Education and Internal Affairs must develop inmate education policy and make it part of Correctional Service’s rehabilitation process.
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