Five State Institutions have jointly undertaken to work seriously to reduce by half, the number of remand prisoners languishing in the various prisons by July next year.
They are the Judicial, Police, and Prisons Services, Attorney-General�s Department and the Commission on Human Rights and Administrative Justice.
The agreement, which was reached by the heads of the institutions at a high level stakeholder meeting in Accra yesterday, Tuesday, October 28, 2009, follows an effective implementation of the Justice for All programme initiated to, among other things, decongest the prisons of remand prisoners.
Currently, the remand prisoner population stands at 3,869, amounting to about 30 per cent of the total prison population of 13,287 in the country.
The high rate of rate of remand prisoners, with some staying on remand for between one and 16 years, has continuously been a cause of concern due to the rampant overcrowding of the prisons. The long stay in the prisons without any conviction has also been a worry since it violates on the human rights of the remand prisoners.
But the four institutions, backed by the United Nations Development Programme and other stakeholders, believe that halving the remand prisoner number by the end of the legal year would be a significant achievement in the national year would be a significant achievement in the national drive to reduce the waiting period of suspects on remand.
Consequently, the meeting, which was held to review the progress of the Justice For All Programme, constituted an eight member task force to co-ordinate efforts towards achieving the July 2010 target.
The taskforce, chaired by Justice Jones Dotse, a Supreme Court Judge, has two members each from the Judicial Service, Police, Prisons and the Attorney-General�s Department. It has up to the end of the year to report to the stakeholder meeting on the remand prison situation and co-ordinate the implementation of an action plan to reduce the number of remand prisoners.
Mrs. Betty Mould-Iddrisu, Minister of Justice and Attorney-General, inaugurating the taskforce at the end of the meeting, reminded the members of the importance of addressing the alarming remand prisoner population, and pledged the support of her outfit to enable the group to work effectively.
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