KUWAIT: The Ministry of Interior has launched a considerable plan primarily aiming at maintaining social and family links and easing out the psychological pain of prison inmates. The Ministry’s scheme, dubbed as "Family House”, is part of the humanitarian attitude pursued by the Humanitarian Leader, His Highness the Amir Sheikh Sabah Al- Ahmad Al-Jaber Al-Sabah.
By adopting this correctional and humanitarian initiative, the ministry seeks to link inmates with their families and society and to encourage them to exercise appropriate behaviors and to soften their feelings of social isolation. The "Family House” is compliant with the principles of the tolerant Islamic Sharia’, international values, charters and conventions, and world agencies’ recommendations for inmate human rights. The scheme provides prison residential units with full living and entertainment services for inmates to spend up to 72 hours with their spouses, children, parents, brothers and sisters. However, inmates can gain access to this new scheme only should they commit themselves to good behaviors, discipline and regulations. Run by an integrated team of academics, social workers and psychiatrists, the fresh prison system is intended to provide appropriate rehabilitation and correction to all inmates so that they could effectively contribute to societal development.
In this context, Assistant Undersecretary for Correctional Institutions and Prisons at the Ministry of Interior Major-General Khalid Al-Deen said the "Family House” mainly aimed at the rehabilitation and correction of inmates so that they could become good individuals who can serve their own society. Speaking to KUNA, he said over 3,000 inmates in Kuwaiti prisons, including 130 females, can enjoy new prison services purposed to maintain inmates’ family and social links in appropriate residential units. He added that this scheme would certainly provide inmates with an atmosphere of psychological and social reassurance and stability just as part of correction measures.
The senior security official went on to say that the plan would also spur inmates to improve their behaviors, give up past negativities, observe prison instructions and join various correctional programs involving vocational, educational, cultural and religious ones. Also speaking to KUNA, Dr Khaled Al-Atrash, a family expert and psychiatrist, said that inmates should not be subject to social isolation since serving prison terms should be meant to rehabilitate them and groom them for better future. He said that in this regard, the "Family House” is a good step in the right direction for maintaining inmates’ social and family links and relationships. Asked about this experiment, a number of inmates hailed the initiative as giving them the hope to get back to the right path and to re-communicate with their family members in a healthy atmosphere aiming at alleviating their imprisonment woes and sufferings. They appreciated the Ministry of Interior’s scheme as having great psychological and social reflections on their prison lives. — KUNA