Apart from the ever increasing presence of remand prisoners in the country's jails, the congestion in the prisons is getting worse as more ex-convicts are returning behind bars by the day. According to The Mirror, its sources at the Ghana Prisons Service point out that the country's 45 prisons were about 60 percent overcrowded, while more discharged prisoners were returning to jail because society continued to reject them and the ex-convicts continually went back to the crimes that first sent them to jail. The rate of recidivism (re-offending) almost doubled over a one-year period, rising from 5.5 percent in 2004 to 8.2 percent in 2005, implying that more ex-convicts returned to prison in 2005 than in 2004. The Service was yet to publish the rate of recidivism for last year, 2006. As captured in the 2005 annual report of the Prisons Service, "the rehabilitation efforts of the service through the purposeful impartation of trade skills to prison inmates should facilitate their smooth reintegration after discharge". "However, the stigma and society's unpreparedness to embrace ex-convicts aggravate their already psychologically broken confidence. To their minds, the better option is to go back to where they are accepted - the prison," the report noted. To curb the rising incidence of ex-convicts returning to prison, the Prisons Service suggested the establishment of what it termed, mid-way centres to provide post-imprisonment rehabilitation programmes to ex-convicts., Generally, in Ghana more people are being locked up in jail. For instance in December 2005, there were 662 more people in prison than at the same time the previous year. The average daily lock-up of 12,371 reflected a 5.5 increase over the 2004 daily lock-up of 11, 726. In a related development, The Mirror said HIV/AIDS remains the number one killer of prisoners in Ghana. It said twenty-seven out of the 111 deaths recorded were the result of AIDS. Tuberculosis, malaria, cardiac (heart) attack and anaemia also sent 16, 12, 10 and 8, prisoners respectively, to their graves. Source: The Mirror