Africa-Press – Botswana. Commissioner of Botswana Prisons Service, Mr Anthony Mokento says prisoners do not have conjugal rights, yet. Briefing Parliament’s Public Accounts Committee (PAC) on Monday, he said there were no structures to facilitate that and that they were currently discussing that aspect.
He said the discussion would be revisited for consideration when Parliament had debated and endorsed the policy. However, he said though prisoners were allowed one visit per month they had family contact through video calling done every day; a technology that started in 2024. Mr Mokento said this had been a progressive development for the prisons service.
To re-integrate ex-offenders back to the communities, Mr Mokento said in 2021 they developed Offender Rehabilitation and Reintegration Strategy, focused to enhance among others community participation in the reintegration of ex-offenders. “To date, 574 ex-offenders were released from Prison and 559 of them were handed over to the relevant reintegration committees while 15 ex-offenders refused to be handed over in spite of them attending the pre-release programme,” he said.
Mr Mokento said out of the number reintegrated, 109 ex-offenders were now contributing to the economy, as they were either employed or self-employed for subsistence. Regrettably, he said 14 of them fell back to crime and were back in prison.
Some of the rehabilitation programmes included psycho-social services intended to address both psychological and social challenges of prisoners, to help them cope with emotional, mental, and social challenges through counselling, therapy, life skills training, social support, and rehabilitation programmes aimed to improve overall well-being and functioning of offenders.
This programme is based on gender-based violence Perpetrators’ Voice and substance abuse program as well as peace education. Vocational Training Programmes are also offered for inmates to provide them with life skills.
The Prison Food Security Strategy is also another program me aimed at engaging inmates in agriculture for food production. “The Prison Food Security Strategy engages inmates in agriculture to meet their food needs through production, promote prison self-sufficiency, and provide valuable skills to participants,” Mr Mokento stated.
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