Regions to get remand courts
The Judicial Service is to set up permanent remand courts in all the regions to deal expeditiously with remand-related cases.
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A high court judge would be appointed to preside over cases that would be referred to those courts.
The initiative, which will begin with the Nsawam Medium Security Prison, is aimed at addressing overcrowding in the prisons.
Chief Justice Georgina Theodora Woode announced this in a speech read on her behalf at the opening of a two-day forum on non-custodial sentencing in Accra.
She explained that the objective was to help reduce overcrowding in the prisons, stressing that the time to decongest the prisons was long overdue.
The forum was aimed at designing a road map for the introduction of non-custodial sentencing in the country’s legal jurisprudence.
It was attended by people with diverse experiences in the legal and para-legal system to discuss and fashion a new sentencing regime to guide judges.
Interior Minister
The Minister of the Interior, Mr Mark Woyongo, called for the introduction of non-custodial sentences to reduce overcrowding in the prisons.
The legal jurisprudence, he said, should aim at reformation and rehabilitation rather than punishing people who engaged in petty thievery and criminality.
Mr Woyongo contended that while many cities and towns needed more hands to clean them up, very strong and able-bodied men and women were languishing in jail for petty crimes.
“I believe that such petty thieves or criminals could be made to render communal service in their home districts, be placed under some restrictions regarding their movements, be on parole or work and pay a fine,” he said.
Mr Woyongo said the country’s prisons were congested by more than 100 per cent, and the large numbers of prison inmates comprised those on remand.
He stated that due to the challenges facing the Ghana Prisons Service, a number of petty criminals often came out of the system worse than they were prior to their confinement.
“They get mixed up with the hardened criminals and come back to the society more corrupted than before to do more harm to peace-loving and law-abiding Ghanaians,” he said.
The minister said it was time the country re-examined the practice where courts remanded first-time offenders for suspected crimes, irrespective of the gravity of the offence.
The Controller General of the Ghana Prisons Service, Ms Matilda B. Awuah, said the total prisoner population at the end of October 2014 was 14,777, made up of 11,653 convicts and 3,124 remands.
The remand population alone constituted 21 per cent of the total prisoner population, she said, adding that the prisons had overstretched the occupancy rate by more than 50 per cent of the original capacity.
“Indeed, in some prison facilities like Nsawam, Kumasi, Sunyani, Sekondi, Tarkwa and Tamale, the overcrowding rate ranges from 150 to 300 per cent each day. This is largely due to the presence of a high number of remand prisoners,” she said.
Ms Awuah expressed worry that young and first-time offenders who found their way to prison were sometimes exposed to all kinds of criminal influences, which hampered their proper reformation and rehabilitation.
Treatment centres
An official of the Narcotics Control Board (NACOB), Mr Daniel Amankwa, urged the government to establish treatment centres for drug users as done in developed countries, arguing that the incarceration of drug users in the country had not reduced the abuse of marijuana and other hard drugs.