Government urged to set targets for reducing prison population

General News of Sunday, May 5th, 2019

Source: ghananewsagency.org

2019-05-05

Mr. Edmund Amarkwei Foley, a human rights activist, urged the government to set national goals aimed at reducing the number of people in prison.

He noted that Nsawam Prison, for example, had been built to accommodate about 800 inmates but currently had more than 2,000 inmates.

It was therefore necessary to take steps to address the problem of the large prison population.

Mr. Foley, however, said that this initiative must go hand in hand with very concrete measures of crime prevention, especially in areas prone to crime.

He stated this during an interview with the Ghana Press Agency in Accra during a press workshop on the decriminalization of petty crimes in Ghana.

The workshop, organized by the Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative (CHRI), was intended to expose media personnel to the "Principles" of the ACHPR to improve reporting and to give visibility to regional instruments promoting criminal justice reforms.

The African Commission on Human and Peoples' Rights (ACHPR), in its Principles on the Decriminalization of Minor Offenses in Africa, defines minor offenses as minor offenses for which the punishment under the law is a punishment of Alert, community service, fine of low value or jail sentence, often for non-payment of the fine.

Mr. Foley said that security agencies, especially the police, were experiencing crime outbreaks in the country and that, as a result, Ghana should start taking social intervention measures to incite the inhabitants of these communities. communities to get out of crime.

"So it's not just a quick justice to get people out, but also a concerted program to prevent recidivism or delinquency," he added.

He added that Ghana's high prison population far exceeded global standards and promoted serious human rights violations because of a mostly punitive criminal justice system.

He noted that research had shown that there were a number of minor offenses for which people were not obliged to go to jail.

Ms. Mina Mensah, head of the Africa office, CHRI, said that a statement from Ouagadougou and Luanda had recommended to member states to decriminalize certain offenses as part of criminal justice reform efforts .

She said that, years later, it was realized that nothing had been done and that the African Union had decided to adopt certain principles to guide Member States in the process. decriminalization of offenses.

Ms Mensah said that as part of her advocacy work, CHRI was implementing a project to encourage Ghana to use decriminalization as one of the modules, and called for the media's commitment to contribute to advocacy for the decriminalization of minor offenses.

She said the capacity of the participants needed to be strengthened to help raise awareness of the ACHPR Principles on the decriminalization of minor offenses and the Ouagadougou and Luanda Guidelines.