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| Sunday, 09 March 2003 |
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| News Business Features Editorial
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Re-integrating detainees - an obligation of prisons M. P. Sarathchandra, Superintendent of Prisons, introduced the Unit Management System to the local prisons when he began a Drug Rehabilitation Unit at Mahara Prisons some years back. "I was impressed by the Unit Management System so successfully initiated at Victoria Prisons, Australia, and devised my own system to suit the local culture," he says. "In this system, groups of detainees are placed in the care of specific groups of prison officials, with each group shouldering the responsibility of developing one's detainees to the point of re-socialisation." He says that during the 1970s, American social scientists reasoned that the archaic mechanism of punishment for criminal behaviour should be replaced by a more productive mechanism of rehabilitation and re-socialisation. "The rehabilitation process I initiated at Mahara aimed at changing the addict's thinking pattern." Though the rate of rehabilitation is generally 20 per cent, an improved mentality lowers the potential of reverting to crime once a detainee re-socialises. "The 250-odd slum gardens in Colombo is the centre in which the underworld nurtures and breeds drug addicts and drug-related criminals, he says. "To curb crime in this environment, we must send back to it rehabilitated and law-abiding citizens." Lack of knowledge of sex and money management has proved to be a major puller towards drugs. "We give them the basic know-how to make a decent living and run a small business. Detainees have gone from custody to become sound businessmen." It is suggested that Prisons should become a service sector and employ privatisation where possible, such as in labour, in order to optimise the re-socialising process. "In the countries where the Unit Management System is working well, every prison officer is a rehabilitation officer. Our difficulty is that our prison officials are only custodial officers, looking after only custody and security." If prisons become a service sector, an officer in unit management becomes a recognised specialist in psychology, sociology and other fields relevant to developing detainees. For the drug addicted criminal, should it be imprisonment or rehabilitation? "The decision who is to be punished and who should be rehabilitated is one that has to be made at the courts," says Sarachdrandra, adding this requires specially trained officers, currently lacking in Sri Lanka. "And we have no probation system other than for children." In a country which deems prison as the only alternative for many crimes, it is also a reality that it suffers from a lack of funds to transform the prison system into a development process where the quality of prison services match the quality of prisoner character development. |
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