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SADC conducts regional workshop for prison services |09 May 2023

SADC conducts regional workshop for prison services

Ms Nourrice and Ms Poiret at the meeting

The Southern African Development Community (SADC) recently organised a regional technical workshop with the Corrections, Prisons, Penitentiary Services from April 17 to 21, 2023, in Johannesburg, South Africa.

This was attended by two of Seychelles’ officers – Elsa Nourrice, who is the head of Psychosocial Rehabilitation and Principal Probation and Rose-Mary Poiret, senior nurse at the Seychelles Prison Service.

The aim of the workshop was to discuss the Draft Guideline on Special Needs populations and the Rehabilitation of Sexual and Gender-Based Perpetrators, as well as work toward the harmonisation of policies and legislation for Corrections, Prisons, and Penitentiary Services.

The workshop brought together corrections experts from all 16  SADC member states who were set to share experiences on the individual country’s programmes employed to deal with perpetrators of sexual and gender-based violence and the management of Special Groups Populations within the Corrections facilities.

The guidelines will provide an overarching framework for the member states to develop detailed and in-depth national context-specific guidelines, with the aim to strengthen the capacity of prison institutions to address issues related to special groups in the SADC region prison institutions.

The workshop also brought legal experts from Botswana, Mozambique, Namibia, and South Africa to work towards harmonisation of policies and legislation.

Speaking to Seychelles NATION, Miss Nourrice said during the gathering they worked on a guideline for SGBV perpetrator in terms of rehabilitation and also guidelines for people with special needs such as the disabled and the system which can be put in place to accommodate them.

“Once we complete the draft proposal, the commissioners of prison from all the member states will meet again to go over the draft, to agree and endorse the document. This document, which is a guideline on ways to deal with a concern raised, would then need to be domesticated by each country as they use it as a working tool,” she said.

Ms Nourrice said it was a fruitful workshop and it was very interesting to hear the different concerns brought by the member states.

“A concern that was raised was how to work with SGBV perpetrators in prison, and what type of programme can be established,” she said.

She added that there had already been programmes in prison, however there were none which focused on a specific group of perpetrators, which the members were proposing.

She expressed how although this is a good initiative, there are still some issues with implementing these types of programme or session such as the diversity of perpetrators and their reason for being in prison might be different,  but their underlying issue may be the same, which would lead to the prioritisation of one specific group of people only. Another issue which she pointed out was the need to sensitise prison officers on stopping violence.

“We, as officers, have to believe that ‘violence is not the solution’ for any sort of situations before we can approach the perpetrators and guide them to see this fact,” she concluded.

The accompanying photos show some highlights of Seychelles’ participation at the meeting.

 

Diane Larame

Photos: Contributed

 

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