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EC to have this expanded to the other prisons. The subjects being offered are Mathematics, Principles of Business and English.
He explained that with the change in the command of the prison welfare and corrections unit, the entire training model is being reconfigured, hence the delay in offering CSEC at the other prisons.
Samuels admitted that at times there is resistance from prisoners to joining the literacy programme, in particular, since there is some embarrassment about attending such classes. He said that the Sentence Management Unit would engage these prisoners about the importance of such classes. He said that a system has been put in place so that “unless you do what is considered as mandatory training, then you can’t go outside and [do] labour. When you go outside and [do] labour, that is where you actually earn. So, you must do A in order to benefit from B.”
Members of the public can have the skilled prisoners do work for them but there is a process that has to be followed. Anyone interested can made contact with the prison headquarters and indicate what they want done. A prison official would then be sent to do an assessment of the work to be done and based on what is required, prisoners would be assigned to undertake the work, for which they would be paid. Samuels told Stabroek News that with the money that convicts earn, many are able to provide for themselves in the prison as well as to send monies to their families.
Samuels also informed that rehabilitation services, such as anger management, are also being offered to prisoners. He said that the aim of these forms of rehabilitation is to bring about a change in the behaviour that may have led to the inmate being incarcerated in the first place, such as in cases of spousal abuse. “We try to improve them… we try to expose them to some aspect of domestic violence training and so on because we do partner with the Ministry of Social Protection and other agencies to offer training,” he noted.