It is time for the prisons in Bangladesh to become proper correctional facilities, Additional Inspector General of Prisons Col Fazlul Kabir has said.
In a press conference at Bangladesh Jail headquarters on the occasion of jail week yesterday, the AIG-Prisons said the prisons would soon be turned into correction homes.
He also said Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina will join the inauguration programme on January 20 at the Kashimpur jail in Gazipur.
“Our society stigmatises persons convicted for crimes. Everyone starts avoiding them. It became difficult for them to come back to the mainstream,” Col Fazlul said.
“To help inmates come back to their normal lives and so that they do not repeat the crimes, the jail authorities have begun a process of giving technical training to prisoners including on tailoring, cultivations, etc.”
Authorities are also councelling the drug addicts so that they could get rid of their addiction, the AIG-Prisons said.
Currently, there is a training centre at the Kashimpur jail. In addition, the newly-built Keraniganj jail also has similar facilities for pertaining technical training to the inmates.
Recently, Inspector General of Prisons Brig Gen Syed Iftekhar Uddin has said that gradually such facilities would be launched in all the 68 jails in the country.
On January 1, there were a total of 71,105 prisoners in the 68 jails across the country up against a capacity of hosting 34,796 inmates at best.
Among them 68,593 were men and 2,512 women. A total of 20,198 were convicted, 50,823 were under trail and 1,197 were sentenced to death.
Among them 438 were psychologically challenged, 5,970 were addicts and as many as 297 infants were living with their mothers.
