Overcrowding in the country's prisons continues to be a major challenge for the Ghana Prisons Service to perform its mandatory function of ensuring the rights and dignity of inmates under their care.
The Service has for the past several years reported prison overcrowding well beyond the internally acceptable limits and made it difficult for it to operate efficiently in the interest of the prisoners.
According to the latest figures, the country's prison population stands at 15,237 which have led to the congestion at the detention facilities across the country.
The figure represents 48 per cent of the prison population, a situation that is having a negative toll on the health of inmates, according to the prison authorities
The total number of prison inmates should have been 10, 265 but, it has increased by 925 leading to overcrowding in the prison facilities.
The Head of Public Relations of the Ghana Prisons Service (GPS), Chief Superintendent of Prisons, (CP) Vitalis Ayeh, in a report published elsewhere in today's issue, lamented the poor conditions in the country's detention facilities and appealed to the government to provide a hospital facility for the health needs of 15, 000 inmates and officers of the service.
Although the Ghanaian Times supports the call for the provision of a hospital to cater to the health needs of the ever-growing population of the country's prisons, it is equally important that some of the prisons are expanded while new facilities are built to accommodate the growing population of inmates.
We are of the view that many of the facilities can no longer accommodate a large number of inmates because of the limited space available across the country.
Indeed, many of these facilities were constructed before and just after Ghana attained independence when the population of the country was small and now that the population has increased, it is only logical to either expand or build new facilities.
The new facilities would not only accommodate more inmates but also create a congenial atmosphere in prisons across the country and ensure the rights and dignity of inmates under the care of the prison authorities.
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Overcrowding in prisons does not only pose a danger to the health of the inmates but also a security risk to the officers who have been tasked to look after them.
The dangers posed by the current situation are grave and the earlier they are resolved the better for the country. We need new prison facilities to accommodate the growing prison population of the country.
