An Ex- convict Benjamin Quarshie has called on government to introduce the Presidential Special Initiative and the distance learning programmes in the country’s prisons as a way to reform the state of the prisons. This he said would ensure that human resources that go waste in the country’s prisons would be reverted into the mainstream development agenda of the country. Until this is done however, Mr. Quarshie claimed the prisons would continue to be the production line for more hardened criminals and the state of insecurity in the country would further deteriorate. “In prison there is virtually nothing to do. They sit, group and take ideas by comparing what they did and what others did, go out and commit serious offenses.” Mr. Quarshie was speaking in an interview with a Joy FM reporter, Stephen Anti after he was granted a presidential pardon by President Kufour. The 26 years old Quarshie has been in jail for the past 16 months for aiding and abating crime and had served his sentence in the Ho, James Fort, and Nsawam prisons. Mr. Quarshie challenged the idea of learning trade in the prisons, saying some of the inmates were not only ready to learn how to read and write, but ready to learn computer as well. While in prison, Mr, Quarshie wrote some books with the help of some inmates as a way to while away time. Nathan Gadugah