The prison in Nigeria did not begin as a system to rehabilitate lawbreakers. It was designed to punish citizens who were opposed to the colonial rule. And as long as the prisons served the interest of the British rulers to maintain law and order, collect taxes and provide labour for public works, it was okay.
More than 50 years after Independence and with several reform attempts, the prison system has not been completely weaned off its exploitative and disorganized beginning. Nigerian prisons still ranked among the most congested in the world. Many suspects spend years as awaiting trial inmates held in inhumane conditions. This category of prison inmates and many others who get sentenced to jail terms end their terms worse off and inevitably live a worthless life or return to crime.
President Muhammadu Buhari kick-started another regime of prison reform last Wednesday with the signing into law of the Nigerian Correctional Service Bill, 2019.
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The new law repeals the Prisons Acts and changes the name of the Nigeria Prisons Service to Nigerian Correctional Service.
The Nigerian Correctional Service Act aims at redressing the inadequacies in the system. With the new law, there will be two main faculties of the Correctional Service, namely: custodial and non-custodial.
The custodial service would ensure that convicts’ individual liberties are taken away, as they are kept in the prison or any reformative centre while serving their terms. But they would fairly be treated and reformed to be useful to the society at the end of their terms. Non-custodial service, on the other hand, administers community service as well as fines and other therapies imposed by the courts on convicts.
According to the senior special assistant to the president on National Assembly matters, Ita Enang, the custodial service ensures safe custody and control of people imprisoned; makes sure they are secure and in good conditions; facilitates their movement to and from courts; identifies the existence and causes of anti-social behaviours of inmates; conducts risk and needs assessment aimed at developing appropriate correctional treatment methods for reformation, rehabilitation and reintegration; implements reformation and rehabilitation programmes to enhance the reintegration of inmates back into the society and empowers inmates through the deployment of educational and vocational skills training programmes.
Enang added: “The non-custodial faculty of the correctional service is responsible for the administration of non-custodial measures, namely: community service, probation, parole, restorative justice measures and such other measures as a court of competent jurisdiction may order.
“Restorative justice measures approved in the Act include victim-offender mediation, family group conferencing, community mediation and other conciliatory measures as may be deemed necessary pre-trial, trial during imprisonment or even post- imprisonment stages.”
The new law is also expected to address overcrowding in the prison, as it grants the correctional service officer the discretion to reject an additional inmate after notifying the appropriate authorities that his facility is full.
It also provides for the maintenance of a database of inmates to keep track of their activities at all times.
It is also envisaged that the new law would eliminate the corruption in the system and ensure adequate welfare for the inmates and correctional officers.
The new law, which was finally signed 11 years after the bill was presented to the National Assembly, is commendable, as it raises high hopes of improved welfare for inmates as well as their rehabilitation.
The administration of the non-custodial service would also be most beneficial, especially coming from the background of absence of retributive justice and offender-victim mediation and other features, which it offers.One of the changes that the law might bring about is ensuring that more prisons are built to address the problem of congestion, especially with the correctional officer empowered to reject additional inmates into his facility when full capacity has been attained.
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However, beyond changing the name and character of the Nigerian prison system, we will encourage the government to follow the examples of other countries that are rather reducing their inmate population and closing down prisons because of the drop in crime rate.
The Netherland that is leading in this revolution, only last year shut down four more prisons. Ireland has also succeeded in reducing its prison inmate population. Similarly, in Finland the model is to move prisoners from high-walled facilities through open prisons to eventual reformation and release.
Criminology researches have established that longer prison sentences are not reducing crime rates.
Ultimately, the best measures to address criminality and ensure the best prison administration are: To tackle poverty; improve education and provide employment opportunities as well as strengthen the criminal justice system.
The government must also provide the most basic needs of the average citizen and eliminate the conditions that would make anyone want to engage in anti-social behaviours that would warrant ending up in jail.