Inmates produce goods in prison workshops

ANTALYA-Anatolia News Agency

AA Photo

Some 400 inmates in the Mediterranean province of Antalya’s e-type prison are engaging in various vocational activities in 19 different workshops of the prison, including yacht making.

Courses and vocational workshops in the prison were opened five years ago to help prisoners in their personal developments and enable them to have a profession.

The inmates are making leather nags, furniture and home textile products, while learning book binding, xylography and paper marbling. Attending various courses such as literacy, foreign languages, baglama, oil-paint, table tennis, Koran, and computer, the convicts have an opportunity to improve themselves.

Also two yachts have been produced in these workshops so far. The yachts, made by a shipbuilder who was convicted for murder six years ago, were sold for 180.000 Turkish liras.

Antalya Deputy Chief Public Prosecutor Adnan Tabar said various vocational courses and workshops were established in 225 prisons in Turkey.

According to Tabar, 6.25 liras of daily wages are paid to the convicts working in workshops, so a person averagely working 22 days in a month earns 137.5 liras monthly.

Tabar said some of the goods produced in these workshops would be used in the courthouse and the prison. “We sell the rest of them in some stores and fairs all around the country. The income obtained from them is collected in Prison Workshops Department. The wages and insurance premiums of convicts are paid with this money,” Tabar said.

Tabar also said the number of convicts attending the workshops was increasing each year. “With the vocational course works, the convicts are integrated in society as socially beneficial individuals,” he said.