Enugu — THE Nigerian Prison Service is worried by the rejection by family members and the larger society of discharged inmates who have served out their jail terms.

Comptroller of Enugu Prisons, Mr. Mohammed Idris, said at the presentation of tools and equipment to three discharged prison inmates under the "Prison's After Care Service scheme" yesterday that such rejection would only force them to return to crime.

According to Idris, the equipment presentation was part of the reformation programme of the service aimed at transforming the inmates to become better persons and make them more useful to the larger society after spending years in confinement.

He, however, decried the attitude of some family members who fail to reintegrate ex-convicts into their folds, noting that it was totally wrong for anybody to treat them with disdain since such treatment could force them into engaging in social vices that would in the long run return them back to prisons.

"The problem of rejection of the discharged inmates by the community is bothering us. Anybody can be in prisons; we have to accept them into the society. Not everybody in the prison is an armed robber or murderer. Some came here because of minor offences. They should therefore be accepted back to the society after their release," the comptroller said.

Insisting that prisons are reformatory homes, Idris said the service had initiated several measures with a view to ensuring total reformation and correction of the inmates so as to make them more useful and law-abiding in the society.

He stressed the need for the inmates to learn basic skills while serving their terms to enable them to be self employed after leaving the prisons.

Speaking specifically to the three beneficiaries of the scheme, Messrs Sunday Anijebe, Ikechukwu Nwankwo and Salisu Mohammed who received a set of welding, haircut and tailoring equipment respectively, the comptroller charged them to use the equipment judiciously to earn a living.