On Friday 29th December, 2023, the Inspector General of Police – Mr. William Fayia Sellu donated two (2) brand new computers and their accessories to the Sierra Leone Correctional Services (SLCS) at their headquarters on New England Ville, Freetown. The support came following the incident of November 26th in Freetown in which inmates were unlawful released from their Pademba Road and Special Court correctional facilities in Freetown. Following that incident, the IGP solicited support from the International Police Organization (INTERPOL) and the West Africa Police Information System (WAPIS) to issue an international notice for the arrest of the fugitives, owing to the fact that some returned to the SLCS facilities few days after the incident and some had already been arrested within Sierra Leone.
To facilitate speedy communication for their arrest, INTERPOL and WAPIS earlier on requested for a comprehensive data of all prisoners on-the-run.
This request revealed some challenges in the data of inmates serving sentence at the Pademba Road and Special Court correctional facilities.
In a bid to address such challenges, officials from both institutions arrived in Sierra Leone on 25th December, 2023, and commenced data regularization exercise at the SLCS.
Speaking at the handing-over ceremony, the Programme Co-ordinator for WAPIS and head of the team – Dr. Mohamed Yansaneh expressed appreciation to the IGP and the Director General of SLCS for the support they received and the access given to them as they carry out their operations on data regularization in the correctional facilities. Dr. Yansaneh urged the SLCS management to make efficient use of the standard template developed by the team for proper data recording.
Making the symbolic presentation of the items to the Ag. Director General of SLCS, Col. Sheiku Sulaiman Massaquoi, the IGP thanked the team for their findings and observations, revealing that the ugly incident of November 26th will be used to change the narrative in the data collection systems. He continued that his support to SLCS will not only be limited to providing computers but also office furniture and professional personnel to help in capacitating SLCS personnel. He opined that “we can use this moment as a pilot phase for the collection of quality data as crash training”. “We are going to support the process as data quality is so important in putting records straight”, closed the IGP.
SLP MEDIA TEAM
