Crime Check Foundation plans

Crime Check Foundation (CCF) is planning to convene Africa's first National Ex-Convicts Reintegration Conference as part of a renewed effort to confront stigma, unemployment and persistently high reoffending rates among former prisoners.

In an interview with the Ghana News Agency, the Executive Director of CCF, Mr Ibrahim Oppong Kwarteng, said the conference was intended to shine a national spotlight on what he described as a "silent crisis" confronting thousands of Ghanaian exconvicts after their release from prison.

Mr Kwarteng said data available to the foundation showed that reintegration failures were driving many former inmates back into the criminal justice system.

"Our data indicates that about 60 per cent of exconvicts reoffend and return to prison, largely because society does not welcome them," he said.

"Many of them are hiding. They cannot show their faces because of stigma."

The conference, which will be held this year on the theme "Rebuilding Lives After Prison," is expected to bring together major stakeholders in Ghana's criminal justice architecture.

These include representatives from the Presidency, Parliament, the Judiciary, the Ministry of the Interior and the Ghana Prisons Service, alongside civil society organisations and the media

Mr Kwarteng said the event would also examine what he described as a fundamental gap in Ghana's post-incarceration framework.

"The irony is that people think the Prisons Service controls exconvicts after release, but the reality is that they have absolutely no control once incarceration ends," he said.

According to him, once prisoners return to society, reintegration becomes a social challenge rather than an institutional one.

"Reintegration becomes social warfare," he added, pointing to limited resources for post-release monitoring, support and reintegration.

He noted that the absence of a coordinated national reintegration strategy directly contributed to repeat offending across the country.

He said the foundation had independently compiled data on exconvicts nationwide, noting that many of them regularly reached out to the organisation for assistance. "They call us daily looking for help," Mr Kwarteng said.

The planned conference will also highlight success stories on reintegration, including former inmates who had rebuilt their lives and become productive members of society.

At the same time, it will draw attention to what Mr Kwarteng described as "the thousands who had no skills, no opportunities and no second chance."

He said a key outcome of the gathering would be policy advocacy, including calls for government-led employment initiatives and a review of laws that restrict exconvicts' access to public sector jobs.

"There are laws that prevent an exconvict from working in the public service for up to 10 years," Mr Kwarteng said. "We believe some of these provisions are inimical to rehabilitation and must be repealed."

He added that relevant parliamentary committees would be invited to help champion proposed legal reforms.

CCF also appealed to the media to play a central role in reshaping public perceptions about exconvicts.

"If we fail to demystify exconvicts, we will keep recycling the same people through our prisons," Mr Kwarteng said.

A multiple award-winning journalist, Mr Kwarteng leads Crime Check Foundation, where years of prison reform activism had earned him the formal title

"Ambassador Extraordinaire of Prisons" from the Ghana Prisons Service.

Now a PhD candidate in migration studies at the University of Ghana, he also leads the Meena Breast Cancer Awareness project, founded after his wife died from breast cancer.