By Iyida, Davids Ikechukwu
Across the world, it is postulated and indeed worthy of note that many prisons are as reformative as the schools (Drente, 2005). However, this is not so here in Nigeria as Ojo,(2007) made it emphatically clear that rather than being reformative and rehabilitative, the Nigerian Prisons system is punitive, degrading and very much dehumanising thereby leaving the Prisoners with the least opportunity of re-entry into the Society. It is also truism that those Prisoners who are lucky to come out alive find it exceedingly difficult to re-adjust to normal lives and eventually end in further commission of crimes (Recidivism) hence, the enquiry in this study: An Evaluation of the Effect of Prisons Reformatory Capacity on Recidivism: A Case Study of Enugu Prison. In interrogating this study, efforts were made repeatedly to have access to the inmates and prison officers who we relied on to elicit information as required; due to several denials as a result of Security issues and challenges as alleged. The tools for data collection used were the Focused Group Discussion (FGD) and Formal Questionnaires. Our research design is the survey method as we had earlier adopted the purposive sampling technique. Pursuant to attaining these objectives, about 203 copies of questionnaire were distributed out, only 195 was returned, leading to the sampling of 195 recidivists. A Logit regression analysis was done to ascertain the effect of prison reformatory capacity on recidivism and also to determine the effect of length of time in prison on recidivism in Enugu. It was found that the prisons reformatory activities are positively related to recidivism but have no significant effect on recidivism. The study also revealed that the duration or length of time in prison is positively related to recidivism and has no significant effect on recidivism. Hence by implication the longer the time in prison, the higher the rate of recidivism. Again the adequacy level of reformatory activities, the higher the rate of recidivism in Enugu, this result did not conform to the theoretical expectation. It is expected that the higher the level of reformatory activities, the lower the rate of recidivism. This might be as a result of the fact that the reformatory activities have not been properly modified to create the expected impact on the lives of prison inmates. We have carefully suggested some recommendations to this effect and it is our expectation that we find it revealing, interesting and useful too.