In 2019, a family friend was arrested and without proper hearing, thrown into prison. For over two months, he was there while his people rallied round for ways to get him fair hearing and eventual justice.
Sometime later -of course, not after a hearing, but after investigation had been done with proved that he was innocent of the crime he was accused of- he got his freedom. I was away from home when the incident happened and throughout his time in prison and only got to learn of the news in bits from around and in whole when he told it to me.
UnsplashWhen he got out of prison, by then I had returned, I noticed he barely came around to my house as he did almost daily. And when he did come out, he took to himself. This was a very bubbly guy.
I'd learn from him that the conditions of his stay there was miserable. Too many inmates per cell that they were almost sleeping on each other, little to no space to strech, dirty latrine by the corner, really cold cell infested by mosquitoes and which smelled badly, small and horrible food which they got once in a day(or was it twice a day), noise and brutality. He told me all these with despair and a feigned strength in his voice.
When he was drowning in the emotion of what had happened to him, his family thought it wise to enroll him in a rehab facility. Little by little, and for months, he began to ease up. He was a good guy so most pf what he needed was to speak up about what he had been through and just vent and get the encouragement which was necessary and a reminder of what was in store for him.
There are lots of people who are in jail that would need just few sessions of rehab-therapy to have a paradigm(I'm not implying that there aren't priole out of jail who do not need rehab. After all, it's therapy). But for this country, Nigeria, the first step would be to make adjustments to living conditions there. We all rightly know too that there are multitudes in there who are innocent of the offenses charged or who just got randomly picked and thrown in there and whose families have no idea where they are.
One thing is, prison will mess their psyche up. Putting them in sane space with actual criminals would worsen stuff. Sone go in there clean and cone out terrible and vice versa. Rehab would be of help to some of these people. To others, it won't.
I like to think that nothing is impossible. People change. I've always thought it unwise that criminals spend so much time in jail going through torture only to be released and the authorities just assume that they'll change. And it's not like, judging from the system in my Homeland, they were meaningfully engaged while there. No. Nothing new learned that they can choose to push forward. Just some idea that, "after this shege they'll not want a repeat of this experience."
I laugh.
I understand that it's a choice to change too. But motions have to be put in place to ensure that these criminals don't get out and find their ways off to their former hub(which is often the case). Might not be easy on the government to provide their basic needs for them. I'm not even expecting my country's government to. But the least they could do is set them up to learn skills. Anything to take their idle minds off filth and violence. Just doing so and backing it up with therapy will do some work. At least, there, they'll get to vent about their lives, talk about dislikes, likes, how they got to where they are, what they'd have done differently, what they'd want differently, alongside getting the encouragements and guide they would need as they venture out to freedom.
Not every one of the criminals would change. But a good number will.
Thanks for gracing this post.
Greetings!