Members of Charity Is Love Foundation led by the founder and Chief Executive Officer, Ms Matilda Baffour Awuah, paid a working visit to the Nsawam Female Medium Security on Tuesday, 30th March, 2021 to hold discussions with management of the prison on challenges facing prisoners at the facility and how the foundation can be of assistance.
Officials of the Foundation interacted with the inmates and explained that its main objective is to ensure that prisoners are trained to acquire skills or vocation with which they can make a living after their release from prison, and hinted that the hard working ones who demonstrate interest in learning a trade and with the capacity to enter into their own economic ventures will be supported financially to resettle when they finish their prison sentences.
Welcoming the officials, the Chief Superintendent of Prisons ( CSP), Mrs. Janet Asabea said the visitation would go a long way to help the inmates in acquiring skills and being productively engaged. The female prison was established on the 10th of December, 1973 and it is the biggest female prison that provides safe custody for both low and high risk female prisoners to seek their welfare and reformation.
Mrs. Janet Asabea revealed that incarcerated mothers suffers more social isolation and have more fractured relationships with their children and family. The longer the mother remains incarcerated, the more the mother-child relationship is at risk and total loss of identity as a mother since been stripped off their maternal responsibilities.
These factors, according to her, put a lot of stress on the women under her care. She noted that, she is always ready to receive all form of assistance from both public and private organizations to help reduce the burden on the women, many of whom are going through emotional trauma due to separation from families and children.
During interaction with some inmates, it came to the fore that most of them had young children before their imprisonment, but they were currently living with relatives who could hardly make ends meet to provide all round care for their children. The engagement brought to the fore the thorny problems faced by mothers in prison; children of women in prison are mostly traumatized by the arrest of their mother and the sudden forced separation imprisonment brings.
Most of the women interviewed reported never receiving visits from their children and others restricting their children from visiting due to anxiety and depression effects during such visitations.
One prisoner noted she was arrested together with her husband three years ago with their case pending before court. Even though she has been granted bail, the conditions attached to her bail, were very high and she was not able to satisfy them, leading to her continuous confinement.
The Chief Executive Officer of Charity Is Love Foundation, Ms. Baffour-Awuah said the visitation forms part of the core mandate of the Foundation to help all categories of prisoners to reform, rehabilitate and return to the society as law abiding and responsible citizens.
Ms Baffour-Awuah said, the foundation recognizes the vital role women play in keeping the family unit running as an important unit of the society. The foundation accordingly intends to devote considerable attention to helping women prisoners access Opportunities that will help support them and their families, especially their young children whose future may be in jeopardy due to crimes of their parents.
Furthermore, the foundation is committed to support women prisoners with vocational and skills training, education, counseling and mentoring programs. Ms Baffour-Awuah was happy to have a team which boast of people with varied background and enormous experience in corrections and policing, clergy as well as education and social workers, which is an advantage for an NGO with the goal of reforming, rehabilitating and resettling offenders into law abiding and responsible persons.
Present were the former Commissioner of Police (Rtd) Rev. Dr. David Ampah Benin, Mr. Mark Agbosu, Deputy Director of Prisons ( Rtd), Mr. Myles Ongoh, Deputy Director of LEAP, Mrs. Gifty Tokpor ( Head of Osu Girls Correctional Center), Rev. Mrs. Grace Gyabaa, Mr. David Essandoh ( External Relations ) and Ms Diana Owusu-Ansah ( External Relations)
