The Minister of Interior, Angelina Teny, urged the prison service to diligently carry out the duty of rehabilitating the inmates.
Speaking during her visit to the directorate of the South Sudan National Prison Service headquarters yesterday, Angelina said the work of the prison does not end with locking up the law offenders; they also need to rehabilitate them.
“The ministry of interior and its directorates are the integrated partners of law enforcement; the role of the prison service is not to take the criminal off the roads and lock him or her in prison but to work on the criminal physically so that once he is released, he will not go back to crime,” she said.
“It is our duty and our responsibility to address the challenges as per the directives given to us by the president during the swearing-in,” she added.
According to Angelina, President Salva Kiir entrusted her with protecting the citizens and their properties and fulfilling this would require a teamwork.
During the event, the Director-General of South Sudan National Prison Service, Gen.Henry Kuany, lamented over the dwindling food ratio of prisoners and lack of access to clean drinking water. He said these are the two main challenges facing the facility.
“The budget for the prison service should take into account the two groups: prisoners and the staff, nothing else. And to shed lighter, the budget for the fiscal year 2023/2024 is SSP 18,837,424,596 but prisoners alone consumed SSP17,100,001,000 per year,” he said.
Kuany said the National Prisons Service of South Sudan has successfully been performing its custodial role of keeping inmates and contributing to their development and their eventual reintegration into society as law-abiding citizens. This is due to the backing of the government and partly due to the support of the international partners the UNDP, UNMISS, ICRC, and others.
Henry explains, “This is more highly regretted than other components of the rule of law, that is Police and Judiciary take a lion’s share of the support provided by UNMISS and other international partners, whereas Prisons are always ignored, and its importance is downplayed.”
Since the appointment of Angelina and her deputy, they have visited the directorates of police services, civil defence, and South Sudan National Prison Service. The aim of the visits is to conduct fact-finding and solve the challenges faced by the various directorates.
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