Sharjah 24 – WAM: Brigadier General Ahmed Abdulaziz Shuhail, Director of Sharjah's Punitive and Correctional Institution, affirmed that the UAE's punitive and correctional institutions respect human rights pertaining to freedom of belief and opinion, healthcare services, and equality.
He added that the institution's headquarters comprises a human rights office affiliated to the office of the Deputy Commander-in-Chief of Sharjah Police, who is mandated with ensuring prisoners' human rights are protected.
Brigadier General Shuhail said, "As part of the Directorate General of Punitive and Correctional Establishments at the Ministry of Interior, we seek to achieve several goals, starting with implementing the penalties set forth by legislators and the reform process, and ending with the prisoner's return to his normal life as productive member of society."
He highlighted the institution's top initiatives, including one to establish a nursery for the children of prisoners, which now cares for 11 children, providing them with health and social care and recreational activities, as well as a health initiative to provide prisoners with dental implants, which covered 109 prisoners.
Through the Sanad initiative, the General Command of the Sharjah Police helped enroll the families of prisoners in professional courses and workshops and grant them licenses to market and sell their products.
Brigadier General Shuhail stated that their eVisit initiative, launched in cooperation with the Sharjah Social Services Department (SSSD), allows prisoners to see their families and spend time with their children, while complying with COVID-19 precautionary measures, while the Faraj Fund initiative helped pay AED1.8 million worth of settlements for prisoners during the first quarter of 2021, in cooperation with the Sharjah Charity International, Sharjah Cooperative Society, Beit Al Khair Society, Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan Foundation, Sharjah Islamic Bank, Emirates Red Crescent, and others.
He also mentioned the institution's vocational rehabilitation programme, which trains prisoners in handcrafting and farming, and the wood recycling, which, with through the help of prisoners, recycled 250,000 tonnes of wood in the past two years.
As for the institution's educational programme, it enables many prisoners to receive their high school diplomas, and others obtained diplomas in tourism and travel, he added, noting that they plan to extend the educational programme to cover master's and doctorate degrees.
Brigadier General Shuhail added that, during the pandemic, the number of prisoner dropped from 5,300 in 2019 to 3,500 in 2020, adding that all the prisoners received the COVID-19 vaccine.
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