Gallows in a gaol
THE world over, prisons are seen as corrective institutions as well as penal centres. Even at that, they
are supposed to maintain high standards of hygieneand human rights, including standard nutri
tional provisions for inmates. But in Nigeria, they are places where anybody in his right mind should never wish to find himself. It is not uncommon to find 12" X 12" prison cells accommodating as many as 30 inmates with no toilet or other hygiene facilities. This means that all of them have to defecate urinate and eat whatever scrappy food they are fed, in the same place for as long as they remain incarcerated.
Most of the cells are actually said to be housing between five and ten times the number of inmates they were built to accommodate. This is typical even of police cells where any one who is unlucky to be held there can hardly come out without one disease or the other. Just walk into the Criminal Investigations Department, CID, of any police station and the stench hits you even at the ‘counter’ where statements are taken before suspects are thrown into the over-crowded cells.
I must confess, I have not had any reason to visit a prison yard. But, going by stories of those who have, they don’t boast of any better conditions than the ordinary police cells in terms of over-population and poor standards of hygiene. Most unfortunate is that the greater percentage of those incarcerated are awaiting trial and have been held for far longer than the terms they would have had to serve if they were found guilty at the courts.
Instead of serving as correctional institutions, Nigerian prisons have become grounds for training more hardened criminals who terrorize innocent indigenes (and foreigners alike) at will with dare-devil tactics that would make even Al Capone, the Sicilian war lord, blink. Although prison structures existed in ancient civilizations, the widespread use of long-term confinement as a form of criminal punishment began only in the 15th century. Today, every industrialized nation has prisons, and the role of prisons throughout the world is to punish criminals by restricting their freedom.
I am tempted to believe that prisons and jails are seen as one and the same thing, which is why those sent to jail and those duly imprisoned for criminal offences are lumped together in the prisons. For the avoidance of doubt, in civilized countries, with definite purposes for holding people in communicado, prisons differ from jails. Jails are seen as facilities operated by local authorities and used to confine adult criminal offenders who receive short-term sentences (in the United States, sentences of less than one year).
In addition, jails are supposed to be used to temporarily house individuals awaiting trial, witnesses in protective custody, offenders charged with crimes in other jurisdictions, and juveniles awaiting transfer to juvenile facilities. But these are usually well defined and operated in ways that do not end up using the tax payers’ money to create further insecurity for them, which was the intended purpose of removing these criminals from the streets in the first place. The major difference between jails and prisons, by definition, is that prisons are meant to house long-term offenders, frequently offer vocational and educational programs for inmates rehabilitation and self-improvement, as a way of turning criminals into responsible members of society, adequately equipped to eke a living without further infringing on the human rights of other citizens. So much for theory!
Like Police cells earlier mentioned, Nigerian prisons are known to be so congested that even government officials are worried sick of the situation. In many instances, chief judges of states who visit prisons, to assess conditions under which prisoners are kept, are known to have been so touched by circumstances of some prisoners that they ordered their immediate release.
Swearing in a new chief judge for Bayelsa State last month, Governor Timipre Sylva made a case for devising measures for the urgent decongestion of prisons in the State. He rightly attributed the situation to delays in the administration of justice in the country. While this may not be the only reason for such congestions, questions come to mind about why such delays cannot be nipped. Are there insufficient courts or judges to see to speedy dispensation of justice? If so, why can’t we appoint more and build more court rooms if truly we need to put away such a large number of people?
Sylva has anecdotes that may very well help. He suggested “periodic review of pending cases involving accused persons who have been under protracted detention without bail and multi-door court houses as panacea to encouraging speedy dispensation of justice through peaceful settlement of cases out of court. The governor is probably privy to the numerous minor courts in the developed world, particularly the United States where judges are appointed to settle minor squabbles while the main courts are left to handle the more intricate ones, and dispense with them rapidly.
There are also opportunities for parole (where convicted persons are set free with a promise to be of good behavior and an officer assigned to ensure compliance). There are night courts, to dispose of minor misdemeanors that would have warranted sleeping in a police cell before being taken to court in the morning. In fact, there are a myriad of ways employed by most countries of the world to maintain the lowest possible levels of prison inmates. So, what is so spectacular about Nigeria that our prisons seem to be over-flowing while new inmates are still being jammed into the already over-crowded prison cells? Is it that Nigeria has a higher crime rate than the rest of the world? Or is it a whacky system we cannot control that is eating at our very fabric?
What Nigeria needs, therefore, is a proper orientation of what it truly wants to get out of its prisons by way of benefits to the society in general. Do we want a torture chamber for criminals as a way of protecting innocent ones? Or should it be a correctional facility that would churn out better members of the society? Or, there again, maybe we should first ask ourselves: “are we spending the peoples’ money for their ultimate good? Or, must we have prisons because every other country does? What should be our focus?” The moment we can answer these basic questions, we can then begin to channel our energies in this direction and hope for returns on our investments. To do otherwise is to grope in the dark, building walls that end up breeding our own very nemesis. Did I hear you say “prison reforms?” Why not? Let us start by opining that anybody in a prison cell as at today, without a case in court, who is avictim ofunnecessarily protracted cases on the part of the prosecution, beyond a period of say six months, should be granted automatic bail. To decongest our prisons to a manageable level is an apparently malignant cancer that only an aggressive treatment can cure.
As suggested by Sylva, it might also be necessary to adopt a multi-faceted approach which emphasizes reforming the criminals rather than branding them enemies of the system. This becomes even more necessary considering that no one ever sets out to be a criminal as they are the products of a system that seems not to have their welfare in mind. In their bid therefore, not to be left out in the cold, they go to extremes in their bid to survive, at all cost. As United States President Bill Clinton experimented in his time, criminals got three reprieves before they would be clamped into prisons. This came to be known as the three strikes option a.k.a. three strikes and you’re out. This means that you do not go to jail unless you have committed the same crime three times. He also caused various tiers of government to provide recreation facilities in their areas in order to keep the young, restless ones busy and away from crime. To serve our own peculiar circumstances, we can come up with our own cures for our local ailments, for ours and future generations. This is where national security hinges; not in maintaining punitive houses that create more criminals than they deter. Punishment does not deter criminals. Concern and understanding are better weapons, any day.
