Government and stakeholders in the justice delivery system have been urged to pay more attention to the infraction of human rights and other challenges prevalent in the prisons system.

The Executive Director of the Crime Check Foundation (CCF), Mr Ibrahim Oppong Kwarteng, said the failure of the Ghana Prison Service to deliver on its mandate was due to the numerous challenges it faced.

In an address read for him at the opening of a sensitisation workshop in Accra, Mr Kwarteng said the prisons faced challenges such as inadequate gadgets and technological infrastructure to effectively detect illegal items smuggled into prisons.

He said this was done by visitors, prisoners assigned work outside the prisons wall, and in some cases the prison officers themselves.

“Our prisons lack the requisite gadgets and as a result pave way for miscreants to smuggle all manner of illegal substances into the prisons, such a situation, we believe, defeats the reformation and rehabilitation agenda of the prisons and makes them breeding grounds for miscreants,” he added.

The La Nkwkantanang Madina Municipal Chief Executive, Mrs Jennifer Dede Adjabeng, commended the Foundation for its initiative and called for support from all quarters to enable it to realise its dreams.

The workshop was organised by the Foundation in partnership with Open Society Initiative for West Africa (OSIWA) and the La Nkwantanang Madina Municipal Assembly, on the theme: “Decriminalising Vagrancy Laws and Advocacy Project.”

The project aims to create an enabling environment for vagrants to know, claim and exercise their rights to end criminalisation of poverty and homelessness in the country.

It also sought to increase public awareness on vagrancy laws and increase citizens’ capacity and oversight to monitor such laws and their effects on the poor and the homeless.

The project is being implemented in 12 Metropolitan, Municipal and District Assemblies (MMDAs) within the Greater Accra, Central and Ashanti Regions.

It is designed to benefit the poor and vulnerable including hawkers, head porters, traders and commercial drivers.