Representatives of about 40 departments concerned participated in the workshop. They included the Directorate General of Prisons, the Ministries of Labor, Health, Commerce, Information and Social Affairs in addition to a number of experts and academicians.
Local Arabic dailies Tuesday said the ex-convicts would be employed after they were trained and rehabilitated for the labor market and after their conducts were corrected to ensure they would not go back to crime.
According to undersecretary of Makkah governorate Abdul Aziz Al-Khudairy, the workshop issued 36 recommendations aimed at promoting the services and programs provided to prisoners.
He said the recommendations included encouraging the wealth and welfare-loving citizens to construct well-equipped playgrounds, schools and institutes inside the prisons for the use of the inmates. "They will also be encouraged to build shops outside prisons to market the products of women prisoners and their families," he said.
Al-Khudairy said the workshop also recommended to use the funds of the Awqaf (endowments) to finance products for the female prisoners. "The commercial banks were also asked to extend financial support to the reforming programs that are being provided to the inmates," he added.
Al-Khudairy, who presided over the workshop, said hospitality homes would be built to accommodate released female prisoners whose families would not accept them. “Part of the proceedings resulting from the rents of the hospitality homes would be used to contribute to the costs of marriage so as to encourage young men and women to get married," he said. The recommendations called for establishing centers in prisons for the social and religious rehabilitations of prisoners and said lawyers should be appointed to defend criminals who are not able to do that by themselves.
