Global IssuesGHANA: Former Convicts Find New Hope
At the age of 56, Frazer Ayee has a lot to look back on. He has been an armed robber and a kidnapper. He was involved in uprisings in Togo and Liberia. In 1988 he was sentenced to death by Ghana’s defunct tribunal system, a brainchild of then dictator Jerry John Rawlings.
After 14 years, his sentence was commuted to life imprisonment, and he narrowly escaped the firing squad, even as 19 of his cohorts were executed.
In 2009, when President John Atta Mills came to power in Ghana, Ayee was released alongside other prisoners of the tribunal.
Now he is the leader of the School of Restoration, a rehabilitation and social support programme operated by the Royalhouse Chapel, a massive religious institution based in Accra.
Ghanaian society typically rejects former convicts, and even prisoners who have never gone to trial but, because of the country’s under-resourced legal system, have lost years of their lives in remand custody.
Isidore Tufuor is a lawyer and supervisor of Access to Justice, a non-governmental program trying to address the remand issue. He says there are no programmes for ex-convicts in Ghana apart from those within the penal institutions themselves. Once they are out, they are simply cut loose.
'If you’re in prison, and you come out, you’re coming to start life afresh,' he says. 'You are a free man. You have to come and face the world. You have nowhere to sleep. You are living on a low budget. You have to cope somehow. And for those who cannot cope and have not got any friends or any family members, they will have to survive again; survival through the commission of crimes.'
Royalhouse welcomes them, giving them clothes, housing, education, health care, and employment, all funded by offerings from its extensive congregation.
'And not me alone,' says Ayee. 'Many people from prison — armed robbers, drug addicts, rapists — all are in the School of Restoration. And this, you cannot find anywhere apart from Royalhouse.'
Ghana’s social support structure is a skeletal thing. Many former felons are too old for the National Youth Employment Programme, which cuts off at age 35. Few of them qualify for the Livelihood Empowerment Against Poverty Programme, because they are not typically elderly, severely disabled, or single parents with an orphan or vulnerable child.
The School of Restoration was started in January by founder and Apostle General of the church, Reverend Sam Korankye-Ankrah, and is run by his wife, Rita. Twenty former criminals and drug addicts are enrolled in the programme, and another 50 are on a waiting list.
On Mondays and Thursdays, they take classes in repentance, forgiveness, teamwork, and anger management. Throughout the rest of the week, they work around the churchyards, helping with renovations and expansions. Each of them is paid 6.20 dollars per day. When they need medical attention, clothes, food, or schooling, Royalhouse Chapel picks up the tab.
'It’s a hectic job,' says Rita Korankye-Ankrah. 'They come out so bitter, so wounded, so hurt, so vulnerable.
'(Many) come out and go back again. They are rejected. They are despised. They are looked down upon by society.'
They are people like 33-year-old Frederick Kwao, who spent five years in prison for rape. He says his girlfriend became pregnant when he was in secondary school, and her parents wanted an abortion. He refused, and the police showed up at his house.
And they are people like 26-year-old Patrick Doe, who went to jail for five years after running cons and scams with a gang called the Butcher Boys.
They have all endured the notorious conditions of Ghana’s prison system, where cells are overcrowded, and men sleep on their sides, packed tight, with no mattresses or blankets. They eat terrible food and bathe without soap or running water. They defecate in buckets. They endure violence. When they are sick, they will be taken to the infirmary and given an injection with a needle already used on several other inmates. The likelihood of tuberculosis and HIV contraction is high.
'If someone dies,' says Doe, 'the person will be lying in the place where we are sleeping until (the guards) are ready to take the dead body.'
And that could take days.
'Things were hard for me in the prison,' says Ayee, 'so I had to contact some officers to bring me drugs to sell, and cigarettes, to get something to eat.'
These men found respite in religion. They listened to the prison pastors. They attended bible studies. Some of them, like Kwao, passed the appropriate tests to start their own study groups. When they were released, they entered a changed world that offered little support, and their choices were stark.
They call Sam Korankye-Ankrah the 'man of God,' and many of them first heard his voice on the radio. He started Royalhouse Chapel about 20 years ago. When the church opened its doors, it had a congregation of 12. Now the Accra headquarters has a flock of 10,000, and there are 200 branches across Ghana, with missions in the United States and the United Kingdom.
In a recent edition of Ghana’s Business Guide, Sam Korankye-Ankrah was cited as one of the richest pastors in the country. He has a lavish house, and at least one of his children schools abroad.
'As I was released,' says Kwao, 'I heard the man of God on the radio talk about ex-convicts, the drug addicts, the drunkards, the prostitutes. He’s ready for them. They should come. He will change them. He will help them and make their future bright.'
All these men are part of the school’s first class. They will graduate any time now, as soon as the church feels they are ready, and new men will be recruited from the waiting list.
'After they finish the school,' says Rita Korankye-Ankrah, 'we are trusting we will be able to put them all in jobs, depending on how well they adapt to the change.'
There are encouraging early signals. One person already works with the church as a receptionist. And two others have had job interviews in the secular world.
'The School of Restoration helps us to forget about our past life,' says Doe, 'so we can continue a new life.'
© Inter Press Service (2011) — All Rights ReservedOriginal source: Inter Press Service