WHAT DOES PRISON LABOUR IN AFRICA MEAN

Is work for prisoners a privilege to save them from the demoralizing effects and misery of endless unoccupied hours? Is it something added to prison to make to make it harder and more unpleasant, or something, which should have a positive value as part of rehabilitation? Those magistrates who clung to sentences f hard labour doubtlessly look upon strenuous work as an additional punishment. This point of view is often widely as right and proper, but it ignores the fact that unwillingness to work is often one of the immediate causes of criminality. To send prisoners to the outside world, more convinced that labour is evil and to be avoided, is to confirm them in their old way of life. It has been said that the purpose of prison work in a program of rehabilitation is twofold; training for work and training by work. The prisoner, that is to say, needs to be trained in the habit of industry; but over and above this, the prisoner will gain immeasurable if it is possible to rouse in him the consciousness of self-mastery and of purpose that the completion of any worthwhile piece of work can give the doer. He may find a pride of achievement in something more satisfying, and more socially desirable, than crime. But these things can only come when the work itself has a purpose and demands an effort.