American International Journal of Social Science

Perceived Contributions of Vocational Skills Acquisition to Prisons Inmates’ Reintegration into the Society
Dr. Tolu Ogunleye

Abstract
The study is a descriptive survey research design which examined the perceived contributions of vocational skills acquisition to prison inmates’ reintegration into the society. A simple ballot system was used to select two prisons out of the five prisons in Ogun State of Nigeria. The selected prisons are the Ijebu-Ode prison and Ilaro prison. A total of 200 participants (these consist of prison officers and prison inmates) were randomly selected from these two prisons for the study. Three hypotheses were postulated and tested. The instrument adopted for the study was a self-constructed questionnaire (Prisons’ Vocational Materials Inventory, PVMI). The PVMI consists of two sections. Section A consists of personal questions which deal with the profile of the individual while section B consists of 30 questions which were meant to help test and analyse the hypotheses. The instrument was validated using content and construct validity and also the test-re-test reliability. It has 0.70 test-re-test reliability coefficient after a two-week interval. The data collected were analysed using t-test and correlation coefficient (r). The findings revealed that the convicted inmates in the prisons are exposed to vocational skills when compared with their counterparts who are awaiting trial. Since vocational skills acquisition is connected with knowledge that someone needs to have in order to do a particular job, it was therefore suggested that all prison inmates should be exposed to vocational skills regardless of whether they are already convicted or awaiting trial, because some of them that are awaiting trial might be in the prison for years. The vocational training of prison inmates will increase the choice of their employment after completion of their terms of imprisonment which will help them contribute their own quota to national development instead of being a nuisance to the society.

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