Some women get it wrong!

"As much as men do not expose some of their chunk of boneless flesh through their flaps while going about their daily businesses, the women should also spare us the sights of cracks in their butts and their almost-about-to-flip breasts from its uncomfortable zones. Being a woman is sexual enough!"

I have heard in many circles that women are their own enemies and as much as I believe that same goes to men too, I couldn’t help agreeing more to that assertion. Whilst, it is easy for commentators to be labeled chauvinistic in nature, I want to also believe that, all the men seek to do, is to comment on what happens in the world of our women.

What’s the big deal? A 20year old Musician, Miley Cyrus “simulated masturbation with a giant foam finger, grabbing her crotch and rubbing herself against a man old enough to be her father, pretending the man was performing anal sex on her and walked around in a nude latex bikini” in a bid at performing ‘twerking’, to the audience that graced the just ended MTV VMA awards in America and the world at large and you ask yourself what has the world come to?

People are talking about how racist the performance was, but, since I don’t have much racial experiences except the one I have had with my fellow ‘Blacks’ who prefers to treat the ‘Whites’ with a sense of urgency at the expense of ethical considerations where everyone should be treated equal and orderly, as far as queues are concerned, so, I have chosen to talk about how the performance was debasing to women.

 

Why is everyone going out of their way to flaunt their sensuality when it is the least to be showcased anyway? It is very convenient for some ladies to go about half naked or to expose their vitals at the mercy of raunchy feeding eyes of men. Whereas, it is worthy to note that this trend is mainly spearheaded by the unmarried who should ideally keep their bosoms intact, the irony is even heightened by the fact that the trend is overwhelming our society.

It is a disturbing phenomenon to say the least, because, they are all around us.  All you have to do is to watch a secular video clip and you will find a woman who is almost nude and shaking what her mama gave her, as though her life is dependent on the act. It is even interesting to note that their male counterparts in the same act looks all dressed up if not well dressed up. I don’t know women to have much to do with Motorbikes, but you are bound to see a half-butt naked woman advertising the brand. They do same when advertising for a stick of cigarette, cars, room fittings, furniture, underwear, stilettos and what have you.

Have some women allowed themselves to be demeaned just because they are deemed to be leaving in a patriarchal society?

Watch a Hip-hop video and you will see a woman happily washing cars in a bikini while her male counterparts sit comfortably throwing dice and sipping alcoholic beverages which does not make sense. Women are supposed to be dignified, protected and taken care of, so subjecting them to such roles only makes you ask if it is solely for the love of money or it’s just their preserve?

Sensationalism accounts for some of the factors that have driven some of these ladies along this road but we also know that, most of them are oblivious of their own folly and ignorance, as they immerse neck deep into unknown cultures and fashion trends.

As much as I do not like to wade into the sensationalism caused by these puppet stars who are instructed on what to do, to be in the tabloids just to distract us from the basic issues and imminent dangers we are faced with on daily basis, my reverberating thoughts would not let me be.

It’s an unequivocal fact that, one’s action or feelings should not stop the other from expressing their persona and what makes them happy since it infringes on their rights, but if the popular maxim still stands that men are aroused by what they see, then is it not convenient to say that, some of these women are pushing their ‘freedom-to-express’ button too hard?

These sights are even commonplace with the advent of social media where everyone feels a sense of entitlement to their space or walls, forgetting that, values and culture still abounds and nothing has changed. Maybe, things have changed, but, can’t we exercise some decorum?

As long as men do not expose some of their chunk of boneless flesh through their flaps while going about their daily businesses, the women should also spare us the sights of cracks in their butts and their almost-about-to-flip breasts from its uncomfortable zones. Being a woman is sexual enough!

Experience even tells some of these poster women with the knack of going semi-nude that, such a lifestyle have a telling effect on their social capital, thereby making them a ‘Miss Right now’ rather than a ‘Miss Right’ for horny men with prying eyes. Yet, the trend is on the ascendency, all in the name of Freedom of expression, a fundamental human right that must be enjoyed by everyone.

We have an explosive menace on our hand as a society and the multi-million dollar question is, how do we curb this derailing trend that is about to detonate, thus, setting our society ablaze with naked women around all dressed-up men?

Ghana Prisons; An asset or a liability?

If you have ever used a phone with an annoying ring tone, then you would have known by now that, the most prudent thing to do under such circumstances is to usually alter the settings to vibration mode or in worst cases, put it on silence, which relieves us and everybody on our timeline, the cacophony of an aching siren which is mistaken as a tone. But do we loathe ourselves should the phone be misplaced afterwards?

The first thing we do when we misplace our phone is to reach out for an alternative phone to call the missing one, just so we can be directed to where the ringing is emanating from, and should your ring tone be set to ‘off’ or to its lowest decibels at the time of missing, then your guess is as good as mine and it is this line of thought where we take actions without recourse to what can happen in the future is what has motivated me to research into the Prison system here in Ghana so that should I find myself being gaoled by any twist of fate, I can find solace in the fact that, I didn’t lower the level of my ring tone.

Prison according to Wikipedia is a place in which people are physically confined and usually deprived of a range of personal freedoms. Other terms the Prison is referred to as is penitentiary also known as pen, correctional facility, remand centre, detention center, jail or gaol and many more as would be discussed in this write-up.

It is however worthy to note that there was a traditional system which saw to it that wrong doers were either banished or ‘cleansed’ by performing rituals and reinstated into society prior to the introduction of the Prisons Systems. The Prison system which abolished the former way of punishing and rehabilitating deviants in society was thus established to give safe custody to Prisoners, ensuring their welfare by protecting their rights to good health, clothing, bedding among other basic requirements and lastly, reforming and rehabilitating them by offering them opportunities to develop a set of skills through trade, training and moral education but the multi-million dollar question which begs to be asked is, are these functions for which these Prisons were built  being  met?

A Prison among other things should have a religious facility, educational facility such as a library, a gym or a place to exercise, a healthcare facility to offer medical care, psychiatric services, dental and a recreational facility which may contain at least a TV and I want to know how far we have gone to address all these requirements as a nation and if not, then what is government doing about it? 

There are currently 45 Prison establishments scattered all over the country with varying levels security such as the closed and open security systems for those who have passed their ‘FLED’ (Full license eligibility date) or those given the ROTL (release on temporary license) to visit home from time to time which is usually a quarter of the way through the Prison sentence but our security system is still nothing to write home about.

Do we have motion sensors to check the wrongful movements of inmates? What about sniffer dogs and roving patrols that will ensure that no stone is left unturned against those who are likely to break jail? What about defensible main gates and armed guard towers where movement from a distance can be monitored?

The Prison system as an extension of the Ministry of Justice aims at punishing and rehabilitating criminals as defined by the law but you realize that the Prison service is mostly interested in only the retributive aspect of their mandate. This is because most of the inmates come out worse than they went inside and you are tempted to ask if they are actually trained to master their acts that sent them there in the first place. 

A Prison system requires that an officer be made responsible for the welfare and supervision of three Prisoners but the ratio in Ghana has risen above six criminals to one officer and counting. Even though the Prison service has been understaffed for a very long time, it is laudable to note that, the quality in the personnel has improved over the years due to the qualification of new recruits.

The Prison service in its effort to upgrade structures to meet the ever demanding and increasing number of criminals however has institutional bottlenecks that continually make lack of funds persistent. They are not granted the right amount of money needed to upgrade facilities which is an indictment to the powers that be and this goes a long way to make the living conditions of the inmates palpable and gross.

Inmates are allowed to sleep, urinate, eat and attend to nature’s calls in their cells and this is an infringement on their rights because they are a part of society and should not be treated inhumanely, not to talk about the diseases they can contract living under such circumstances.

The Prison service in its effort as part of restructuring the rehabilitation and to give a sense of dignity to the inmates has proposed to change their name from Ghana Prisons service to Ghana correctional service since the year 2007, but is yet to be approved by an act of parliament which would in tend give the law a force. As to why the bill is yet to be promulgated into a law after six years and counting is another area we will look at some other time.

Our system has no ‘deferred sentence’ where for one reason or the other, one’s sentence can be deferred until they are ready to serve their terms. Examples can be given of pregnant women who are sentenced to jail terms and allowed to deliver and cater for their new born babies with the scanty resources that are provided to the inmates. Ill-health is also another reason why deferred sentences has to be introduced into our penal system so that inmates can be given special treatments at home until they are fit again to continue serving their terms.

Currently, there are about 14,000 inmates who are sharing resources meant for about 8000 inmates and you can tell that, the situation is purely a matter of the fittest surviving against all odds. Most people are not supposed to be there in the first place and this behooves the justice system to expedite trials on remand Prisoners who in some instances would be acquitted and discharged or imprisoned to ease the pressure off the resources and to also mitigate wrongful punishment of people because justice delayed is justice denied.

Apparently, most of these remand Prisoners mostly are there because they have not been able to afford a lawyer and that is bad. The government has to furnish these people with lawyers on pro bono basis to see to it that justice is dispensed timely, which can go a long way to boost the capacity of the justice system and to help people build confidence in the system.

We can also reduce the number of these remand Prisoners by sentencing them to undertaking community services. The government can make use of these deviants by putting them to work in their communities to help clean the communities or help contribute their quota to the community by doing diligently what they have been tasked to do and this can also go a long way to serve as a deterrent to others, because the idea of the justice system is not necessarily to be retributive but to help people change and become good citizens.

Ghana happens to be one of the destinations that still make use of archaic Prison infrastructures dating as far back as four hundred years e.g. James fort, which was built for only 200 people but now houses about 740 inmates per the data available as at the time of reviewing the available literature.

There are no proper transport systems to convey inmates to and from the field where they sometimes work. Exposing and leaving these inmates on their own can be dangerous to the Prison Guards and society at large, because some hardly reform, as they keep plotting their vengeance, especially, those who were wrongfully incarcerated.

There is no gainsaying that the food given to the inmates is of bad quality and mal-nutritional, but it is probably because, government is not giving them much. Alternatively, i do not think the tax payer’s money should be channeled into feeding Prisoners. Most of these Prisoners could be made to work and keep large acres of farm lands, especially those who are sentenced with hard labor. The state cannot be at their brunt while they were free and still spend its money on them while incarcerated and proper management of this situation can even give the nation a surplus from their produce.

Sadly, most of these inmates only come back into society as hardened criminals because there are no

adequate training and education for them. Recidivism; the act of relapsing into criminal activities, abounds in our society because there are no workshops to train these inmates and where there are, they are not operational and no one seems to care because the crime or neglect being perpetrated is not directly on our doorsteps.

Most of these deviants sifted from the public domain and named as Prisoners ended there in the first place through no fault of theirs but through system failure. A system that sentences an unemployed young man for uprooting a neighbor’s cassava without his consent and tries an employed civil servant forever for embezzling public funds meant for the collective growth of everyone is certainly a failed system. 

These Prisoners must be helped to regain their sense of worth and self-esteem to be able to be re-integrated into society without problem. It will be a step in the right direction if social and civil organizations can come out to help the government to tackle the problems and solutions herein by donating and sponsoring some of the things needed to fully rehabilitate the system and it’s dependents in a bid to making this place a better place for all of us.