TEHRAN (Iran News) – The Prisons and Security and Corrective Measures Organization has prepared a plan, aiming to create jobs for around 100,000 inmates in the current Iranian calendar year which began on March 21.
“We have set the target for offering services to 60 percent of the inmates by providing each of them with 150 hours of training courses,” IRNA quoted Ahmad Rahro-Khajeh, an official with the Organization, as saying.
The vocational training program is carried out based on an agreement signed with the Technical and Vocational Training Organization, the Ministry of Cultural Heritage, Tourism, and Handicrafts, and the Ministry of Agriculture, he explained.
Despite the prevalence of coronavirus in the past [calendar] year, we managed to provide the services to 70,457 persons, equaling 41 percent of the inmates, he added.
Khosro Mokhtari, managing director of Cooperative Foundation for Prisoners, said in March that some 35,000 job opportunities have been created by 950 workshops in prisons across the country.
One hundred thousand inmates are provided with skill training courses on average per year, he noted.
About 70,000 of the prisoners succeed in receiving technical and vocational certificates which will be valid after they are released from prisons, he added.
Sustained employment of prisoners during incarceration and support for the employment of prisoners’ families after release is on the agenda, Mohammad Mehdi Haj-Mohammadi, head of the Prisons and Security and Corrective Measures Organization, has said.
About 70 percent of prisoners in Iran are directly and indirectly involved in drug-related crimes, Eskandar Momeni, the director of headquarters for the fight against narcotics, said in November 2020.
Some 40 percent of the inmates in prisons are convicted of drug smuggling directly and 30 percent indirectly, he stated.
According to Momeni, many social harms such as divorce, violent behaviors, robbery, etc. are rooted in drug use.
He added that over four million people in the country are regular and recreational drug users.
