Remand orders and prison congestion | Thenigerialawyer

NOT for the first time, the nexus between prison congestion and
the role of judges, who arbitrarily order the detention of
defendants, has returned to national consciousness. Like his
predecessors, the incumbent Chief Justice of Nigeria, Walter
Onnoghen, reopened the prickly subject at the 2018 All Nigerian
Judges’ Conference, warning judges against recklessly remanding
suspects in prison custody. This message resonates with the public,
who are at the receiving end of the consequences of horrible prison
conditions.

For Onnoghen, judges can liberate the prison system from “the
national embarrassment” it has become by being thorough in issuing
remand orders. In an impassioned advocacy, the CJN warned the
judges to stop clamping defendants into detention, especially in
cases where the police lack concrete evidence to sustain criminal
charges. “Reckless remand orders must not be issued … where your
courts do not possess the requisite jurisdiction to entertain such
matter,” Onnoghen stated.

Although there are other factors, this culture is at the heart
of the prison congestion debacle. In this, judges do the bidding of
the police, who haul suspects to court without having done proper
investigations. Thus, the prisons are filled with people who may
have been arrested without justification.

Past efforts to untangle the justice dispensation system and
make it work efficiently have failed. As of November 12, there was
a total prison inmate population of 75,544, according to the
Nigerian Prisons Service. Of this, only 24,403 (or 32 per cent)
were convicts. Disproportionately, 51,141 or 68 per cent were
Awaiting Trial Persons. It is partly through these reckless remand
orders that the prisons are overcrowded.

When assessed individually, the rot in the prison system is
scandalous. The Owerri Federal Prisons in Imo State, which was
built to shelter 548 inmates, currently harbours 2,253, 411 per
cent in excess. Living conditions there – as in all the other jails
countrywide – are nasty, abhorrent and dehumanising. A female cell
there – meant for 13 inmates – had 83 in August.

A 2017 report by the National Bureau of Statistics corroborated
the mess. The prisons in Lagos State, whose total capacity is for
3,927, harboured 7,396 as of 2016. Similarly, the prisons in Kano
State, constructed for 2,116 inmates, had 4,183. Rivers State
prisons contained 4,424 instead of 1,354 inmates. Some are locked
up unduly because they cannot afford the legal fees required to
process their bail documents or their fines. This is
unthinkable.

Some ATPs, including minors, languish in detention because of
the indiscriminate arrests by the police over petty misdemeanours.
In March 2016, Women in Clergy (an NGO), decried the shocking
conditions in Suleja Prisons in Niger State, during a visit by its
members to facilitate the release of detainees who could not afford
to pay their fines. There, the NGO unravelled the pathetic case of
an eight-month-old baby who was locked up with her incarcerated
mother.

On the other side, police cells are equally swarming with
inmates, some of who find themselves there for minor infractions.
Defendants clog the cells because they are often denied bail and
not put on trial at the appropriate time because of the slow
turning wheels of justice. It is why Onnoghen harped on the
effective use of remand orders and the need for judges to stop
police abuses.

However, there are several pragmatic options to decongest the
prisons. The CJN should institute a national framework for the
sustenance of periodic visits by heads of courts and state
attorneys-general to the prisons and police cells within their
jurisdictions. These frequent assessment visits will facilitate the
freedom of inmates who have been unjustly detained. The CJN should
promptly sanction judges who flout the directive to stop issuing
reckless remand orders.

This newspaper has advocated that all sentences should not be
custodial. Convicts, particularly first offenders, could undergo
community service. This is practised in Europe. In Germany,
convicts who show good behaviour are allowed to work in the daytime
before returning to the prison at night. They are granted early
release if they show consistently good behaviour.

With a government report that 80 of its 117 jails are
overcrowded and understaffed, Britain’s Ministry of Justice, in
2017, said it would invest £1.3 billion to modernise the system and
construct larger prisons. Having discovered that overcrowding in
its prisons stemmed from those on trial, Senegal’s Ministry of
Justice has just introduced the electronic tag bracelet system to
curb it. Instead of worsening the inhuman conditions in the
prisons, these bracelets, which go into operation in 2019, will
allow the authorities to monitor them.

Nigeria should also design new methods to combat the disgraceful
sore of overcrowded prison cells. Children should not be
incarcerated with their mothers anymore. While it is imperative to
modernise the prisons, having been built decades ago, it is also
critical to make the prison system reformatory. “To beat prison
overcrowding you need to say we’re jailing too many people,” says
British NGO, Howard League for Penal Reform. “We need to look at
sentencing; we need to look at how people can earn their release
once they are in prison.”

Currently, prison is the 48th item on the Exclusive Legislative
List in the 1999 Constitution. This should not be so. To make them
leaner, better and safer, there should be devolution of the prison
system in which they will be decentralised to enable the federal,
state and local governments operate their own penal
arrangements.

Culled from PUNCH EDITORIAL