The Sunday Mail
Lea Mutanda
Zimbabwe Prisons Correctional Service (ZPCS) is decentralising the Prison Commemoration Day to all prison holdings countrywide this year.
The move comes at a time when Government is trying to promote the successful rehabilitation and re-integration of offenders’ countrywide.
Children play on the jumping castle during the Prison Day Commemorations in Murewa
Earlier this month, ZPCS celebrated its Prison Commemoration Day at Gwanzura Stadium in Harare where inmates from Chikurubi and Harare Central Prisons mixed with society and were allowed to spend unlimited time with their relatives.
Speaking at Murehwa Prison Commemoration Day where 10 prisoners were awarded building certificates last week, the Officer Commanding Harare Metropolitan Province, Senior Assistant Commissioner Alvord Gapare, said there is need to value and maintain the relationship between prisoners and the community.
Prison officers on horse back during a procession to mark Prison Day Commemorations
“In line of these key areas, which I believe are reinforced by community involvement in driving the reform agenda that counts on offender rehabilitation and re-integration, it is, therefore, important that I emphasise on the need of community involvement,” he said.
“Community involvement helps in maintaining the link between the offender and the community, and to a greater extent eliminates isolation and stigmatisation that the offender and his immediate family may suffer.”
Fun and dance at the Murehwa Prison Day Commemorations
Senior Asst Comm Gapare said female inmates are very important and that there is need to establish a more humane correctional centre like Connemara Open Prison which houses females.
“We have seen that it is important for us to establish open prisons for female inmates,” he said. “Females are a very important and sensitive constituency within our communities whose roles favour that they are in constant touch with the family and community as opposed to outright incarceration.”
“Furthermore, the open prison system is more conducive for facilitating inmates’ rehabilitation and successful re-integration given that it is at most serving as a half-way home,” he added.
Inmates dance to music during the Prison Day Commemorations in Murehwa
An open prison is any jail in which the prisoners are trusted to serve their sentences with minimal supervision and perimeter security. Also the prisoners are not often locked up in prison cells.
Senior Asst Comm Gapare said the humane correctional centre will allow inmates to go on home and interact with their families thus preparing them for their release.
At the same event, a non-governmental organisation, Family Action Corrective Empowerment in Zimbabwe (FACE Zim), donated two heavy duty sewing machines for inmates at Murehwa and Mutoko Prisons.
