Decongesting Our Prisons

One sore point in our justice adminis-tration system is the archaic nature of our prisons which are in dire need for reforms to make them meet civilised standards. Nigerian prisons have become so neglected by the Federal Government to the extent that the level of congestion there could pose a potential threat to the security of the country if not urgently tackled. It is toward reducing the high level of congestion in the prisons that the Chief Judge of Lagos State, Hon. Justice Ayotunde Phillips took the occasion of the commencement of the 2012/2013 legal year in the State to release a record 233 awaiting trial inmates at the Kirikiri Prisons. This kind gesture is also embarked upon by Chief Judges of the various states in their bid to reduce the over congestion in the prisons by releasing some hapless citizens who may have suffered more than is necessary in keeping with the fact that justice delayed is justice denied.

This is why the interest the Senate displayed recently on how to decongest the prisons is very commendable. The lawmakers are reportedly working on a bill that would enable them to keep a tab on detainees in Nigerian prisons with a view to facilitating the dispensation of justice as it affects them. There seems to be something amiss in a country which has 227 prisons with a total capacity to hold about 20,000 inmates, but which now reportedly accommodates about 51,000 as at December 2012. This situation becomes very depressing when one considers the inhuman manner in which some inmates could be held in our disused prisons. More worrisome is the situation whereby out of the 51,000 inmates 33,731, made up of 32,997 males and 734 females are awaiting trial and a good number of them may have been incarcerated for very long periods, some for very minor offences. This clearly shows that there is urgent need to tackle this seemingly intractable problem which move the Senate has rightly embarked upon in a country where over 1,000 citizens are rightly or wrongly hounded into one form of detention or the other daily. It is thus clear that our prisons are in want of decongestion. But to do a good job at it, we need to first understand why our prisons are congested because without finding out the root causes, there’ll be difficulty in prescribing solutions. For instance, some experts have blamed the delay in justice delivery to the situation where most of our judges and magistrates still write in long hand, while some fail to sit regularly for official or personal reasons.

They note that there is undue delay in the prosecution of criminal cases by the police in the magistrate courts because the police rarely have their witnesses ready in court, and must then ask for adjournment. Another cause of delay in justice delivery arises from the office of Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP), when advice is sought in a case. The experts aver that this, at times takes months, even years to obtain, while the victims are languishing in detention because of some bureaucratic bottlenecks in the administration of justice.

Besides, it has been suggested that since ours is a federal state, states and even local governments should be allowed to build and run prisons too, because most of those being sent to prison or prison custody are being sent there by the state governments. This means that apart from decentralizing the prison system which for now is in the exclusive legislative list, more prisons should be built to decongest the existing ones while the control of prisons should be brought to the concurrent legislative list to allow ownership of private prisons as in developed countries. This position is supported by the Attorney-General of Jigawa State, Justice Tijani Inuwa – Dutse who canvassed that prison service management should not be left to the government alone, pointing out that private  individuals who have the means should help in bringing about a conducive environment for inmates. “The prisons are supposed to be reformative, to reform somebody and make him have a sober reflection as well as keep somebody away from polluting the society. It is meant to make them repent and as well  learn some trade in the process. Unfortunately, if you look at the whole arrangement under the Nigerian context, there is nothing than to keep on looking out for ways to improve the standard of our prisons”, Inuwa-Dutse lamented.

The foregoing, no doubt, coming from the Chief Law Officer of a state shows that even the officers engaged in the justice delivery system themselves are not comfortable with the condition of our prisons, which instead of being a reformatory of some sort have become a training ground for hardened criminals.

Unfortunately, there is no sign that the government is taking the steps necessary to overhaul our criminal justice system in order to wipe out the prolonged detention without trial syndrome that is ravaging the prisons. Granted that our development has not reached the stage where prison alternatives like probation, suspended sentence, and community service, which are currently absent in Nigeria’s civil justice system in non-violent offences, are applied much needs to be done and very quickly too to salvage what remains of the human dignity of inmates in the overcrowded Nigerian prisons. Thus far as the Senate and other concerned bodies strive to make the prisons in Nigeria grounds for reformation of criminals, there is need for attitudinal change by the officers charged with the administration of justice particularly, as it relates to prisons in order to salvage what remains of the human rights of inmates.