The 14th ICPA annual conference tagged “Different Paths, One Vision: Transforming Corrections” was held at the Presidente Intercontinetal hotel, Mexico City from 28 October – 2 November 2012. The conference addressed several issues faced by Correctional Services all over the world and provided PRAWA with a platform to carry out its Prison Reform Intervention in Africa project (PRIA) related international experience sharing and capacity building activities.

During the conference, PRAWA organized three workshops which had several conference participants in attendance. The first workshop titled, ‘PROMOTING COMPREHENSIVE, EFFECTIVE AND SUSTAINABLE PRISON REFORMS IN AFRICA; NEEDS, ACTION AND VISION’, was moderated by the Executive Director of PRAWA, Dr. Uju Agomoh and featured the following guest speakers: The Deputy Director General of the Rwanda Correctional Service, Mary Gahonzire; The Commissioner of Kenya Prisons Service, Isaiah Osugo; The Commissioner of Zambia Prisons Service, Percy Chato; and The Controller of Prisons- Research, Planning and Statistics: Nigerian, Dr I.W Orakwe. Each guest speaker addressed the workshop topic within the context of their respective prisons. The workshop analyzed the conditions of various African prisons, their challenges and way forward.

The second workshop was tagged, ‘MENTAL HEALTH IN AFRICAN PRISONS, CHALLENGES AND PATHWAY TO REFORM’. The workshop commenced with a presentation by Dr Ahamefule Agomoh who provided a comparative analysis of the status of Mental Healthcare within the prisons in the six pilot countries of the PRIA project. While acknowledging Zambia as the only country that has a Mental Health Legislation, he stated that Nigeria currently has a Mental Health Bill which is yet to be passed into law. He further advised that rather than lay emphasis on resources; Nurses, Social workers and Clinical Psychiatrists- especially those at the primary care level- should be allowed to provide basic care to mentally ill patients, since there are available clinics and drugs in prisons.

In addition, he identified National Laws and Legal frameworks as the overriding problem in the provision of effective mental health care in prisons and emphasized on the need for available resources to be used for the benefit of inmates. After his presentation, Dr Uju Agomoh discussed the various categories of the mentally ill persons in prison and the factors that clog their accessibility to Mental Health care. In conclusion, she called on the prison services to provide care and rehabilitation to their mentally ill inmates and engage various stakeholders in order to ensure the prohibition of civil lunatic admission into their prisons.

The last workshop focused on the ANALYSES OF THE TRANSFORMATION OF CORRECTIONAL SERVICES IN DEVELOPING COUNTRIES using the PRIA project. Mr. Percy Chato, The Commissioner of Zambia Prisons Service, gave a brief introduction of the PRIA project and its implementation stages. He explained that the project, which included a baseline research, identified several challenges faced within the Penal systems of the six pilot countries of the project, as well as intervention gaps. Based on these, PRAWA, through the project has been implementing several activities targeted at facilitating penal reform within the African Continent. Some of the activities identified include: Funding of Prison Officer’s participation at the ICPA annual conferences and ACSA (African Correctional Services Association) biennial conferences to encourage knowledge acquisition through experience sharing; increase in quality and frequency of media reporting through training of journalists; increasing stakeholders and partners support within the prison sector in order to promote comprehensive and sustainable penal reforms, and internal capacity building for Prison Services on human rights and good prison practice.

The conference officially ended with a closing dinner reception and prison visits.