05 November 2013| last updated at 11:29PM
KOTA KINABALU: Family rejection hurts prisoners more than the sentences they get, said Sabah Prisons chief inspector Rajesh Juri.
"A man, who had been imprisoned seven times since he was 18, said he would rather get the death sentence than be rejected by his family. The man, who was released in 2011 at the age of 35, now runs a grocery store in his hometown after his family rejected him," said the former head of the correctional rehabilitation programme unit in Sabah.
He said most convicts facing the same situation would continue to commit crime upon being released from prison if they were rejected by their families upon their release.
He said that rejection by family members usually happened because they were ashamed of the convict's past, despite the convicts undergoing rehabilitation.
Rajesh, 40, who has served with the department for 17 years, was among 125 medal recipients at the Malaysian Prisons Department Day celebrations here yesterday.
Present at the event was Sabah Prisons director Ab Basir Mohamad, who delivered the speech on behalf of director-general Datuk Seri Zulkifli Omar.
Zulkifli said involving the community in the parole system had helped to improve the correctional rehabilitation programme.
"So far, only 48 out of the 13,871 prisoners (nationwide) on parole went back to committing crime," he said.
He added that 95 per cent of those rehabilitated secured jobs with the help of government agencies.
The department has also introduced 44 skill-based courses including carpentry, agriculture and cooking as part of the rehabilitation programme within prisons.
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