ORGANISATION SEEKS TO TRANSFORM PRISONERS The Prison Fellowship Botswana aims to transform offenders and those that have been affected by crime, as well as to reconcile relationships between criminals and victims. The organisation’s executive director, Mr Ronald Dintsi said, however, that the organisation was faced with challenges in its endeavour to rehabilitate former offenders into responsible citizens. Speaking at a press conference at the University of Botswana recently, Mr Dintsi said the challenges included reluctance by communities to buy into their Get Involved in Offender Transformation to Combat Crime, Promote Reconciliation and Restore Communities project. He also said there was minimum understanding of the function of PF Botswana. Mr Dintsi said owing to numerous challenges, among them financial, they were unable to fully service prisons in the northern parts of the country. The press conference marked the first visit to Botswana by the president and chief executive officer of Prison Fellowship International, Mr Timothy Khoo. Mr Khoo said his organisation was to curb the high rates of divorce and strengthen relationship reconciliation. He said restoration of the ex-prisoner was necessary to bring peace in the community, as it reduced re-offenses and thus saved governments money. “We felt the need to start this organisation to change society’s mentality of stereotyping of criminals ...” he said. He further emphasised that two thirds of prisoners were incarcerated for property offences, meaning they were not violent crimes such as rape or murder as most people assumed. “We have to break the cycle. We have to create a place where criminals come out better people not better criminals.” The chairwoman of Prison Fellowship Botswana Pastor Tonic Modimakwane said they had programmes they started for criminals including Christmas Parties, Gospel outreaches, Pre Release Counselling and Skills development. (BOPA)
Posted on: Thu, 29 May 2014 09:23:57 +0000
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