CS looks into partnering with educational institutions

Acting Correctional Services Commissioner Stephen Pokanis announced last Friday in Lae that the department is looking at partnering with educational institutions to provide training for inmates.
The training would include technical skills training in agriculture and Bible studies that the department saw as part of their rehabilitation efforts.
Pokanis said certain prisons around the country would facilitate training. He said those who wanted to take up agriculture training would go to a particular prison
that offered agricultural studies and the same would be for other technical skills training like carpentry.
“This is so that each prison concentrate on one programme rather stretching resources to cover different fields,” he said.
Pokanis said that was how rehabilitation programmes would be organised and would incorporate sponsors and partners such as the Education Department.
“In Bomana prison, we have tried the two years diploma course on Bible studies which will be completed next year, while for Kerevat there is a Technical Vocational Education Training (TVET) programme going on there as well as Baisu in Western Highlands,” he said.
Pokanis said, for Lae, it was the central location of the country so there would be trials of two or three programmes for prisoner rehabilitation.
Pokanis said case management needed to be improved to create a file for the prisoners who were trained in order to track the success of the programme.
“This will go a long way to help the prisoners in terms of parole and also become their references when seeking jobs after leaving prison.” he said.
He said the aim was to rehabilitate prisoners.