22 Sep 2022

Overcrowding is reportedly among the challenges facing most Botswana prison facilities with repeat offenders identified as a major contributory factor.

Speaking at a capacity building workshop for reintegration committees in Machaneng on Wednesday September 21, Assistant Commissioner Oatlametse Motshebe said Botswana Prisons Service had devised intervention strategies which included working with communities in offender rehabilitation and reintegration.

Also introduced was the reconciliation aspect, which entailed, in the case of murder, engaging stakeholders such as psychologists and social workers to provide prolonged counselling for the victim’s families, he said.

Mr Motshebe explained that the move was in a bid to help families heal and in the process forgive the incarcerated offender  for the sake of peace upon release.

He said the organisation was in the process of  forming community based reintegration committees across the country.

The aim was to foster social reintegration of offenders within their communities so as to afford them the opportunity to lead a positive, productive and meaningful life free from crime, said Mr Motshebe.

One of the objectives is to create an enabling environment for effective involvement of the community in the rehabilitation and reintegration of offenders. 

A second  objective is to provide an opportunity for establishment of networking and sustenance of partnerships between the organisation and the community.

Committees are also  responsible for the coordination of programmes and services rendered by the community to ex-offenders as well as intensification of ex-offender accountability through victim or family reconciliation process.

For her part, Superintendent Maipelo Lufu, a social worker by profession, said difficult as it was, the reconciliation process was crucial for both the victim and the offender.

 Reconciliation was for the sake of peace which would eventually result in the offender being easily accepted by the community, she said. Ends