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| Prisons and Correctional Facilities Asia 2012 will discuss issues like prison overcrowding and security |
As overcrowding in Asian prisons continues to remain a challenge for prison officials, the Prison Department of Malaysia is stepping up its efforts to address this issue by employing and implementing effective strategies.
In conjunction with IQPC Worldwide, the Prison Department of Malaysia will be launching the 2nd Annual Prisons and Correctional Facilities Asia 2012 in Kuala Lumpur on 22nd and 23rd May 2012. The conference brings together international and regional prison commissioners, senior prison officials and key industry stakeholders to discuss the challenges and strategies to enhance prison design, management, operations and security for prisons and correctional facilities in Asia.
Providing the keynote address at the conference is DatukWiraHj. Zulkifli, Commissioner General of the Prison Department of Malaysia—who will be touching on prison overcrowding and the effective strategies that his department has implemented. DatukWira will be joined by an impressive speaker panel—including the prison commissioners from Australia, Indonesia, South Africa, the Philippines and Malawi.
Following last year’s success, Prisons and Correctional Facilities Asia 2012 promises to be a high-quality, inter-governmental and industry summit, where international best practices, standards and security technologies will be discussed. When asked about the challenges and strategies in designing effective rehabilitation centres instead of ‘prisons’ in South Australia, Mr. Peter Severin, Chief Executive of the South Australia Corrective Services replied, “The answer to that is to have what we call a really strong access control. There is a lot of technology in that. We use x-ray machines, we use drug detection devices and we use metal detection etcetera, and it is not because we do not trust people who come into prison to visit, but because we want to make sure that we eliminate contrabands from coming in. Once you have an environment that we control new access roles, you can actually be a lot freer inside your prison than you otherwise can. So we try to have very solid surroundings in prisons and then inside, we can actually offer a lot more rehabilitation and a lot more opportunities for prisoners to change.”
In addition, the Prison Department of Malaysia will be organizing a post-conference a field trip to their latest state-of-the-art correctional facility at Sungai Udang, Malacca, as part of the programme. Visitors will be able to have a first-hand experience of Malaysia’s latest ESS system at Sungai Udang, and interact with the prison staff and inmates.
