The Ministry of Interior has planned new programs to rehabilitate prisoners across the Kingdom, the ministry said in a letter to the National Human Rights Society (NHRS). The letter came in response to concerns voiced by human rights bodies in the Kingdom on the prison conditions in the Kingdom. The Ministry of Interior has designed two major programs to uplift the situation of prisons and prisoners. An advisory program for prisoners has been planned to advise and counsel inmates regarding adjustment to institution life, resolution of personal problems, and acceptance of professional assistance in the rehabilitative process The program also involves lecturing inmates through professionals and scholars on their misconceptions and social values as part of the second plan of integrating them back into society. The ministry's second program aims to help prisoners back into the outside world and to give them personal confidence and the skills to get a job after their release. As this second program is still in its early stages, more skilled manpower would be needed to handle it, the ministry said. Such assignments, based on the recognition of superior correctional skills of the incumbent, require the judgment, maturity, and knowledge of inmate behavior developed through experience gained in a wide variety of assignments. Human rights bodies in the Kingdom welcomed the development plans, wishing for more careful immersion of prisoners into society though. – Okaz __
