The General Organization for Technical and Vocational Training (GOTVT), which gives courses to prison inmates inside detention facilities, has said it will continue to enroll them at its public institutes outside prison after they complete their sentences. Saleh Al-Mustanir, a prisoner-training official from the GOTVT, said that enrollment would be conducted in complete confidentially in respect of the trainees' former status as prisoners. “That is to ensure that released prisoners can continue their courses while not being adversely affected psychologically,” Al-Mustanir said. “They will be treated exactly the same as all other trainees and receive the same financial help in order to help them reintegrate into society.” The GOTVT has collaborated in recent times with the Prisons' Administration to set up technical and vocational training institutes inside detention centers across the country to help inmates gain qualifications in various professions and prepare them for employment upon their release. The Women's Prison Administration in the province of Makkah, meanwhile, held a series of lectures last week designed to “protect inmates from depraved ways”. Khadija Al-Ghuraibi, the head of Makkah Women's Prison, said the lectures sought to address the “forbidden things into which young women fall due to naivety, leading them to stray into forms of behavior that see them end up in prison”. “The lectures included the tales of women prisoners who got involved in mobile telephone and internet communications without any self-awareness or fear of Allah and led them into scandals and eventually prison,” Al-Ghuraibi said. “More often than not the talks ended with repentant inmates telling their own true stories, and prisoners responded to the point that they could not hold back their tears.”
