The Director-General of the Ghana Prisons Service, Patience Baffoe-Bonnie, has emphasised the need to ensure quality care for prisoners.

She said how prisoners were cared had a direct impact on the quality of public safety. 

She reacted to Interior Minister Muntaka Mohammed-Mubarak disclosing the daily feeding allowance for prison inmates had been increased by 178%, from GHS1.80 to GHS5.

He said it would "take GHS10 million a quarter," to manage the increment and this would be captured in government's next budget presentation as a stand-alone item, unlike before.

Ms Baffoe-Bonnie welcoming the development, noted more had to be done "beyond the feeding," given that "there are a lot of challenges" in the prisons service.

"And if we want to have serious public safety in this country, we need to prioritise the needs of prisoners," she warned. 

While she appeared to hinge her call on humanitarian grounds, she indicated the intimate connection between the free and the incarcerated, and the consequences that connection held for society.

A lawyer, she said, "They are part of us, they'll be with us, and we don't know who next is going to be our guest."