Prime Minister Gaston Browne is calling for prisoners in Antigua and Barbuda to receive practical skills training as part of their rehabilitation.

Browne said inmates should be placed in structured programmes that teach trades while allowing them to perform productive work within communities.

The prime minister suggested that prisoners could learn landscaping by cutting grass, planting trees, maintaining roadside vegetation and watering plants. He also proposed assigning inmates to clean gutters and perform other community-improvement work.

“We will have a programme in which you put them in the communities to work — go and learn a trade,” Browne said during the Browne and Browne Show.

He argued that such activities should be treated as skills development rather than hard labour.

“Let them learn a little landscaping,” he said. “Go and plant some trees at the side of the road and manicure them, water them on a daily basis. It’s about learning landscaping.”

Browne raised the proposal while criticising what he described as a prison system that imposes too few consequences on repeat offenders.

He said rehabilitation should prepare inmates to secure legitimate employment and become productive members of society after completing their sentences.

The prime minister did not indicate when the proposed community work and vocational training programme would begin or which categories of prisoners would be eligible to participate.

This article was originally published by Antigua News Room. Read the original article here: PM Insists Prisoners Should Learn Landscaping and Other Trades.