The Influence of Vocational Rehabilitation for Societal Re- Integration of Inmates in Nigerian Prisons in Rivers State

The study examines how vocational trades’ acquisition rehabilitates inmates for reintegration in to the society. Inmates that are expose to vocational training during the period of incarceration easily gets rehabilitated and can reintegrate in to the society upon discharge as a result of possession of skills that can make him/her useful. The study adopted the descriptive research survey design. The population of the study consists of 4723 inmates and 509 prison officers. A sample of 593 respondents (369 convicted inmates and 224 officers) were selected which is a representative of the population. Inmates were purposively selected while simple random sampling technique was adopted for the selection of the officers from four Nigerian prisons in Rivers State. Three research questions were answered with two null hypotheses that were tested at 0.05 significant levels. Instrument for data collection was a self-constructed questionnaire titled “Vocational Rehabilitation of Inmates for Societal Reintegration Questionnaire” (VRISRQ) which was validated by two experts. The instrument was designed using a checklist and Likert-5 point rating scale of agreement. The instrument was subjected to reliability test through Kuder-Richardson formula 20 (KR20) and Pearson Product Moment Correlation (PPMC). Reliability coefficients of 0.87, 0.82 and 0.86 were obtained for different sections of the instrument respectively. Frequency and percentage was used to answered research question 1 while research questions 2 and 3 were answered using mean with standard deviation. Hypotheses were tested at 0.05 level of significant using independent sample t-test. The findings of the study revealed that vocational trades that are available in Nigerian prisons in Rivers State can rehabilitate inmates if they are acquired. The study also found that acquisitions of vocational trades by inmates are marred with challenges such as poor training facilities, poor funding. Based on the findings of the study, it was recommended among others that prison authorities should expose the inmates to vocational trades that are available in the prison for acquisition to enhance their rehabilitation and reintegration and that Government, Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) should assist in provision of training facilities in the prison as this will make acquisition of vocational trades realizable.