LAHORE, July 8: New blocks are being constructed at the district jail for women prisoners, Minister for Social Welfare and Women Development Shaheen Atiqur Rahman announced on Monday.

She was visiting the prison with Social Welfare Department secretary Qazi Afaq Husain, Home Department additional secretary and the jail superintendent.

The minister said 70 per cent of the juvenile prisoners became criminals accidentally. “Instead of punishment, they need rehabilitation in a friendly environment,” she said.

Nobody, she said, a criminal by birth. The social environment, economic constraints, illiteracy and poverty led people to crime.

The minister promised that none of the children and women detained would spend more time in jails than their respective sentences. She said efforts were already underway to provide legal assistance to prisoners.

More attention was being paid to vocational training and education of women and children in jails, the minister said. She added that a majority of such prisoners faced very complicated problems on account of lack of rules. Initially, she said, posters stating facts and major rules had been pasted on jail walls to assist them. More work in this regard was under way, she said.