The Chief Justice, Mrs Justice Georgina Theodora Wood, has called for a second look to be taken at the existing law on non-bailable offences as one of the measures aimed at reducing the high number of remand persons that congests the already over-populated prisons in the country.
In addition to that, she said, other penal reforms should urgently engage the attention of all national stakeholders, adding: “We need far-reaching interventions if we are to bring about significant changes in our legal system.”
She said it had become urgently inevitable to take another look at the entire criminal justice system, especially “our substantive and procedural laws and our sentencing regime, in order to introduce those changes that will radically transform the quality of criminal justice administration in Ghana”.
Mrs Justice Wood said this when she addressed a dedication and thanksgiving service for the newly constituted Prisons Council at the Cedar Mountain Chapel of the Assemblies of God Church in Accra yesterday.
Some of the non-bailable offences in Ghana include rape, treason, defilement, narcotics and murder.
Available expertise for reform She said, the nation was blessed with the requisite institutional and human resource capacity needed to “undertake this critical assignment”.
She said, for instance, that there were legal experts in academia, the Judiciary, the Ghana Prisons Service, the Attorney-General’s Department, the Ghana Police Service, the Law Reform Commission, in private practice and the Department of Social Welfare who could constitute a rich think-tank to overhaul the criminal justice system.
Mrs Justice Wood said as a country with democratic credentials, Ghana needed to demonstrate a clear commitment to the rule of law and respect for the constitutional rights of remand and convicted prisoners.
The over-crowding and the generally deplorable and inhumane conditions that prisoners across the country found themselves in, she said, warranted immediate action.
Time to act is now Unfortunately, she said, “as a nation we have spent enough time expressing sorrow and sadness over the state of affairs but we must act now to prevent the situation from deteriorating any further”.
The Judicial Service, she said, had a crucial role to play in minimising the challenges facing the Ghana Prisons Service, adding that the Judicial Service was ready to co-operate with the Ghana Prisons Service to find solutions to those challenges.
Some of those challenges, she said, were clearly avoidable and required minimal effort to alleviate.
A few days ago, she said, the Judicial Service launched a sentencing guideline document, with the collaboration of the Ghana Prisons Service.
She said those guidelines were part of the modest steps towards lowering the high population in the country’s prisons and described the move as commendable.
Another initiative which was helping to reduce the numbers in the prisons, she said, was the Justice For All programme.
Prison is everyone’s second home The Chairman of the Ghana Prisons Council, Rev Dr Stephen Wengam, in an address, said the council had visited prisons across the country and the calibre of personalities it had met in the prisons was an indication that “a prison is everyone’s second home”.
“Don’t think that you are too far away from it; you are only a step away from it,” he said, adding that there was the need for all to join hands in efforts to transform and reform the country’s prisons.
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