THE plight of hundreds of inmates who are being held in prisons all over the country beyond the legal period of remand, has stirred action from key players in the country’s judicial system.
Initiated by the Attorney-General and Minister of Justice, those who have moved to right the wrong include the Chief Justice, Inspector General of Police, Minister of the Interior, Director of Legal Aid, Ghana, Commissioner of the Commission on Human Rights and Administrative Justice (CHRAJ) and the Director of Prisons.
As a first step to deal with the problem which was highlighted this week, following a visit by CHRAJ to the Nsawam Prisons, all the stakeholders have signed a memorandum of understanding in which four thematic areas of the justices system would be overhauled to nip the problem in the bud.
Reacting to the revelation that about 1,554 remand inmates were being held at the Nsawam Medium Security Prisons alone, the Minister of Justice and Attorney General, Mrs Betty-Mould Iddrisu, described the memorandum as the first step in a holistic move to curtail instances where suspects were remanded for undue periods.
Dubbed Justice for All programme, the four thematic areas that the stakeholders are working on are the Remand Review Project, Sentencing Review Project, Prosecutors Capacity Building Project and Systems and Procedures Analysis Project.
Explaining further, Mrs Betty Mould-Iddrisu said funds had been secured from the UNDP to undertake the holistic approach, which included the establishment of specialised courts that would cater for remand cases, making police prosecutors report directly to the Attorney-General’s Department and developing a code of conduct for prosecutors, as well as sentencing guidelines for judges.
Under this system, she explained that the stakeholders were developing a code of conduct for the prosecutors, to ensure that the police would know their boundaries, which cases they were supposed to deal with and the ones they were supposed to transfer to the Attorney-General’s office for advice, as well as allowing for follow-ups by the AG’s office.
She explained that under the current system, the police prosecutors who were dealing with more than 70 per cent of all criminal cases in the country, under which most of the accused persons have been remanded for long periods, were not under the Ministry of Justice but under the Ghana Police Service.
Mrs Mould-Iddrisu said such prosecutors reported to the Criminal Investigations Department of the Ghana Police Service, a situation which had made it very difficult for her ministry to trace and follow up on cases and added that some of the cases were even beyond the capability of the police prosecutors.
She said with the specialised remand courts, prosecutors would not have the liberty to go for a myriad of adjournments unnecessarily, putting accused persons in remand for years because the judges under this system would be able to follow up on each case.
She added that the effectiveness of this system was that if the judges realised that the prosecutors were being lackadaisical with cases, the prosecutors would be held accountable and even ask them (prosecutors) to either open their cases or submit no case for the release of such accused persons.
Mrs Mould-Iddrisu added that other systemic problems identified and being worked on were the lack of vehicles for prison officers to transfer accused persons to court, transfer of prosecutors from their duty post to other places and lost of dockets, which had been some of the main excuses for remanding people for long periods, and gave the assurance that these would be things of the past.
Regarding the sentencing guidelines, Mrs Mould-Iddrisu said her outfit would discuss with the judges, especially the Supervising High Court Judges, to ensure that other judges used their discretion to giver lighter sentencing for lesser offences.
She added that all the problems had come about because there was a weak level of co-ordination, co-operation, communication and collaboration among the various institutions and stakeholders.
She also said institutions of the justice system lacked the capacity to adequately discharge their duties while the citizenry had over the years demonstrated limited knowledge of accessing justice.
In a related development, the Chief Justice, Mrs Justice Georgina Wood, and the Commissioner of CHRAJ, Mr Justice Emile Short, have reiterated their desire to collaborate to address the increasing number of remand prisoners in the country and build the capacities of their respective employees.
This was contained in a statement issued after the two had met in Accra.
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