Rehabilitation in Ghana: Assessing Prison Conditions and Effectiveness of Interventions for Incarcerated Adults

We assess the extent to which the penal system in Ghana has adopted rehabilitation as a fundamental principle and a means to attain desistance from offending and examine the history of incarceration in Ghana, how the advent of colonialism supplanted the traditional rehabilitation approach of restitution and community reintegration and rehabilitation ideals as a process of restoring people who have offended to full citizenship and reaffirming the fundamental belief in the dignity of the person. The chapter reveals prison conditions violate rehabilitation principles and outlines the implications of such violations for the individual and society. It is seen that prisons are underfunded, overcrowded and understaffed and that the system is focused primarily on safe custody of persons serving prison sentences. Rehabilitation remains on the periphery. Where rehabilitation programmes exist, they are focused primarily on vocational training and basic skills acquisition. The review found a disconnection between existing legislations and recent efforts to reform prisons to ensure that they meet their reformative goals. We conclude with some reflections on how rehabilitation could be reimagined and articulated within a resource-constrained context.