Today was another first for me, and for all CRED Team Trips, as we visited the Nyagatare Juvenile Detention Centre, which CRED partner GNPDR has links with through its prison chaplaincy programme. It was a fascinating and very insightful visit and I came away very impressed with the input and support that the prison staff give to the young offenders The JDC has 410 inmates of which 22 are girls and 388 boys. Of the girls 3 are on appeal and therefore wear a pink dress. The other 19 girls have been sentenced and wear orange. The boys are also in pink if on appeal (27 of them) and in orange if sentenced. The three most common categories of crimes that they are in there for are theft, drugs and rape. Ages are 14-20 years, and sentences range from 3 months through to several years. There were a number of aspects of the visit that impressed me. I’ve never been into this kind of institution before, whether in Uk or abroad, so some of this might be standard, but even so I was impressed The first thing was the level of provision of academic and vocational training opportunities. Every young person that is in the JDC spends a large chunk of each day in the classroom. This might be an academic classroom of the same grade as they were at when convicted. Or, for young offenders with a sentence of less than one year, they instead do one or more short vocational courses, with a certificate of competence at the end of it The vocational options are carpentry, welding, tailoring, hair styling, and basic construction/ architecture. As the tutors showed us round it was clear that they really know their stuff and strive to ensure that the young people get the best training that they can in order to have better chances of a lawful means of income generation on release The classroom teachers are all qualified teachers and the students still get the opportunity to sit their national exams. Indeed if a young person passes their national S3 exam, their sentence is nullified so that they can be released from the JDC to attend tertiary education- now there’s an incentive to study hard! Another aspect I was struck by was that the tutors, on the whole, were themselves prisoners who had been identified from other prisons and brought to the JDC in order to use their skills to train the young people The JDC has 60 adult prisoners of which 55 are serving time for genocide related crimes. Before the genocide they had gained and were using professional skills and it is good to see that part of their rehabilitation is in being given the opportunity to use these skills again In so doing they gain some self-respect, they make better use of their time inside, and they give of themselves to others in an effort to improve the prospects of the young people. I think it’s a clear sign of a progressive, forgiving, forward looking nation that they have found this way to utilise the skills of the prisoners I was really impressed with the attitude of the prison staff as well. For them their work is clearly a calling and not just a 9-5. They care about the young people, and want the best for them. One guard is a qualified architect who has given up his professional career to work in the JDC as a tutor in the vocational centre, and as a general guard as well. That’s quite a career change and evidence of a selfless servant heart All in all it was a really impressive visit. Certainly lots to think about, but their massive focus on rehabilitation of the offender and preparation for life on release means that the reoffending rate is very low, and a leading example of good practice on the international stage.
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