Recent release of a number of prisoners for family visits has created some interesting headlines in the media and it has also brought to limelight some very covert loopholes that can play havoc to the post release management programme of offenders.
I will list some of the bits of news which I found rather fascinating.
1. News which stated that some families were requesting the police to take their family members back to the prison.
This bit of news shows that the families were perhaps in no way consulted or prepared under any programme to receive the prisoners and would rather have their family member in the prison than back in their homes. For me this is a very critical bit of information, which triggers an alarm in my mind. It informs that any post release management of offenders must make family preparation, building family support to accept the family member back into the family a priority and if this issue is not tackled properly the post release management programme can suffer in a similar way as did the community rehabilitation of drug addicts in the Maldives. We must make family counselling a priority and get a professional with training in family counselling to lead this programme. Family counselling or family therapy is one of the most challenging forms of psychological interventions and those who do so must be adequately educated in psychological theories and therapy with specialised focus on family counselling or in family therapy. If we do not have Maldivians with such training we must get expatriates and not hand over already dysfunctional and distressed families to amateurs.
2. News that a number of those who were released for family visits were already rearrested for re offending.
This is obviously interesting because their actions reveal that these people were not yet ready for parole at all. They have not gone through adequate or possibly any form of rehabilitation within the prison and were just not ready to join the community, just as yet. Therefore, I am sure the members of the parole board who understands all this would be screening these aspects in their interviews before parole is really granted and they are released to a post release management programme.
Just to decrease the number of prisoners in the prison we cannot shift people who have offended back to the community without preparing them to join the community, if they are they will definitely reoffend as has happened.
3. Demonstrating to the general public the degree of transparency that is possible in the current government and also the level of understanding, cooperation and communication between the parole board and the senior officials who were responsible for the release of these prisoners for the family visit.
I think it is a wonderful thing that the parole board chairman can go the media and say, they were not consulted prior to the release of these prisoners for family visits. It appears that the release of all these prisoners was more of an attempt by politicians to try and calm prison strikes. Another interesting bit of news is the police stating that they will not be held responsible if these people commit crime again.
It sure shows we are in a real democracy now, however, I think all this has only given an advantage to one group of individuals. The prisoners have understood these conflicts and I will not be surprised if they become the beneficiaries of this entire dispute. Now will they listen to the parole board if they say after the interviews that they do not qualify for parole and go back to prison? Or will they put up another strike? Hmmm
2 comments:
perhaps members of the parole board may be held hostage or blackmailed
very academic and theoretical statements..
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