Prisons need Scanners

Articles

Prisons are supposed to be a place for reforming criminals yet it is not unusual to hear about all manner of crimes among the prisoners. Some of these are the abuse of substances and breaking of jail with the aid of prohibited implements.

It is not far-fetched to say that items are sent into prisons by prisoners and their visitors conceal on their bodies.

To stop prisoners and their visitors from continuing to outwit prison wardens, most prisons have introduced scanners. These examine the body through the use of radiation and ultrasound or magnetic resonance imaging.

In other words, scanners help to reveal items hidden in any part of the body, including private parts. It is believed that some of the prohibited items are hidden in the private parts and elsewhere on the body, where the perpetrators know no prison officer would dare to touch during a manual check. It is, therefore, hard to believe that the prisons in the country do not have scanners, which has made it difficult for the Ghana Prisons Service to prevent the smuggling of illicit items into the cells by inmates and visitors.

All over the world today, scanners at both the entry and the exit points of prisons is the norm because manual check on the body has its own human rights and other implications and mischievous persons can exploit the situation and even sue the service and the state.

In the face of the growing trend of crimes, the prison would remain a very important institution used to isolate criminals from law-abiding citizens to assure society of safety from dangerous persons.

However, the prisons in Ghana cannot perform this function effectively if it lacks the equipment to do so. We are aware of some of the needs of the country which the government is making efforts to meet one way or another, but now that the lack of scanners is hampering the work of the prisons, it would not be out of place to single out that problem and give it urgent attention.

After all, the scanners would save time and energy in searching prisoners and their suspicious visitors.

The prison officials can also save the efforts, time, and cost of bringing in a doctor situation where prisoners or visitors are suspected of hiding prohibited items in the anus.

The most serious aspect of it, as the service has already pointed out, is that with time some criminals would outwit prison wardens and smuggle in weapons and the result would not be acceptable.

There can be jailbreak and prison officers would be targeted on their blind side to make the break easy.

The Ghanaian Times has envisioned the situation and hopes the scanners would be brought in quickly to prevent an avoidable disaster in the country’s prisons.

Source: Ghanaian Times (Editorial)

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