The first batch of junior high school students who wrote the Basic Education Certificate Examination (BECE) while serving various sentences at the Nsawam Prisons have graduated with a 100 percent pass. Their ages ranged from 20 to 58. The 12 convicted prisoners made up of seven males and five females passed with aggregates ranging from 11 to 22. At a graduation ceremony organised in the prison yard by the Ghana Prisons Service yesterday, Mr. Gay Akotia, the instructor and the headteacher of the JHS who is also an inmate, pleaded with the government to tamper justice with mercy and free the graduands to enable them to continue their education with schools which had picked them through the computerisation selection system. He said because the pupils performed creditably they had been picked by first class schools such as Mawuli School and Krobo Girls High School saying that "the government must pardon those convicts for them to continue with their formal education while a parole officer supervises them". Mr. Akotia said such a Humanitarian gesture would motivate those inmates who are not interested in pursuing formal education. The headteacher, said teaching fellow inmates with little food whose nutritional value was nothing to write home about in their stomach is also challenging. "Therefore we want the government to extend the school feeding programme to our school," he said. Mr. Michael Kofi Bansah, acting Director-General of Prison Service however, said all the graduands would have the opportunity to pursue various courses at the senior high school level within the yard. He said arrangement had also been made for one of the graduands who was due for discharge early next year to continue his education at the school which selected him. Mr. Bansah commended the untiring efforts of the instructors with whose help the Prison Service is giving education to inmates with the aim of reducing illiteracy in the prisons. He said statistics available indicated that about three out of every five prisoners were either semi-literate or illiterate, "therefore, there is the need for the Prison Service to support the government to attain the Millenium Development Goals". Mr. Bansah asked the public to change their perception about ex-convicts since they need to be integrated into the society after learning and acquiring certificates "else they relapse into the old ways the prisons had fought hard to reform." A Deputy Director of Prisons, Chris Larvie, officer in charge of the Nsawam Male Prison, said the decision to start a formal school in Nsawam Medium Security Prisons is a booster to the Prison Service's efforts at reformation ,and rehabilitation which was reached at a Discharge Board meeting in 2007. He said initially, the plan was to start a JHS only but certain developments compelled the committee to expand the programme to cover the senior high school, non formal education and information technology classes as well. DDP Larvie said the current school enrolment stands at 155 comprising of 40 JHS, 20 SHS, 45 Non Formal Education who are learning Akuapem Twi, Ewe, and Ga and 50 computer IT. He said the students were being handled by 29 teachers, made up of 22 inmates, who were given stipend for their voluntarism and seven staff members. Mr. Larvie said in order to expand and sustain the programme, to achieve the desired results, there was the need to start the construction of a 12 unit classroom block which had been on the drawing board and also motivate the instructors by increasing their allowance. Mr. Anku Mawuli was adjudged the Best Student. He took away book prizes as the best student in English, Mathematics and Social Studies. Credit: The Ghanaian Times