Information Provision And Ethical Issues: the Case Of Prisoners In South-West, Nigeria

Abstract

Information, though intangible, is a necessity in the life of man be it for economic, politics or research. However, its provision is hindered through policy or ethical considerations. The paper investigates accessibility of information and ethical issues confronting information provision to prisoners in South-west, Nigeria. Stratified and purposive techniques were adopted. Of the 594 longterm prisoners in the 20 prisons in South-west, Nigeria 472 i.e. 79.5% were enumerated for this study. Findings revealed that information are available for vocational programmes such as tailoring, barbing and carpentry at 80.2%, 95.1% and 85.9% respectively. While education especially tertiary rated at just 10.6%. Information on Information and Communication Technology (ICT) is abysmally low at 5%. Ethical issues surrounding information rated low and this include restriction 18.5 %, time allocated 5% while privacy and environment where information is given to prisoners were equally low at 10.6% and 6.9% respectively. It was recommended that an information policy be put in place to address ethical issues identified and that prison libraries be established in the long run while public library should be well funded to provide mobile library services to prisons in South-west,Nigeria as it is done in the developed countries.