Mass Incarceration, Harsh Punishment and Confronting Injustice:
The Demand for Global Reform.
By Bryan Stevenson
I believe that each person is more than the worst thing he or she has ever done. Our lives, our purpose and our value as human beings cannot be reduced to a single act, even an act that is tragic with profound and devastating consequences. No one is only the crime they commit. For me this conviction has evolved over 25 years providing legal assistance to condemned prisoners on death row and challenging extreme sentences imposed on marginalized people, especially the poor, children and people who are disadvantaged.
Mass incarceration and the politics of fear and anger have made America’s criminal justice system increasingly unreliable, less responsive to error and frequently corrupted by the abuse of power. Aiding people who are wrongly convicted or sentenced and pursuing reform of policies that unnecessarily contribute to despair, inequality and injustice has always felt necessary and essential.
I believe that America’s history of racial discrimination and the legacy of slavery, racial terrorism and segregation continues to cloud our ability to treat all people fairly. We have not truthfully confronted the costs, the trauma and the burden that our ugly and brutal history has created and we have not fully committed ourselves to eradicating the bigotry and bias that has been bred and tolerated in our country. So, my work has also focused heavily on eliminating and challenging racial discrimination and thinking about remedies and recovery for disempowered communities of color that are demoralized and discouraged.
Finally, I am persuaded that extreme poverty cannot be reconciled with justice. Poverty in America is frequently a consequence of failing to protect basic human dignity and an abdication of our responsibility to meet the basic needs of everyone. There are economic and social structures and political conditions that frequently create, sustain and perpetuate extreme poverty that must be re-examined and reformed to create a just society. This has thus become a focus of my work.
In 1989, we began a non-profit law project in Alabama which has grown into the Equal Justice Initiative (EJI). My life and work at EJI has at times been extremely challenging and overwhelming. There is a profound absence of hope in many of the jails, prisons, courtrooms and communities where I have worked. I’ve seen many despised and broken people condemned, discarded and destroyed by fear, anger and ignorance. I’ve seen bigotry and discrimination undermine justice and fracture the lives and aspirations of too many people. I’ve also seen violence and despair create tragedy and needless victimization.
However, I’ve also been extremely fortunate. My life and work has been enriched by people whose humility and perseverance knows no measure. I have been the beneficiary of untold acts of kindness and mercy. I have been granted more grace than I deserve.
Dostoyevsky wrote that “truth crushed to Earth shall rise again,” and I have witnessed that phenomenon in some of our cases. Martin Luther King proclaimed that “the moral arc of the universe is long but it bends toward justice” and I have experienced that in our struggle to help the poor and the condemned. Jesus said that one day “the first shall be last and the last shall be first,” and I have seen this transformation in communities where hope has been resurrected and the powerless have found their voice.
It is a privilege to advocate for human rights and to fight for the dignity of every human being. I am blessed to stand with incarcerated people, the poor, the disabled, even the despised and rejected on death row. I am persuaded that you judge the character and civility of a country not by how it treats the rich, the privileged and the powerful. Rather, you judge a nation by how it treats the poor, the imprisoned and the condemned. And so, the work goes on.
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THE ROLE OF FAITH BASED ORGANIZATIONS IN
EX-CONVICTS’ REHABILITATION PROCESS.
Presented By Pastor Vincent Omegba
Of The Redeemed Christian Church Of God & Hope Hall Inc, Aurora Colorado.
Religion was once called the Opium of the masses by the German Philosopher Karl Marx. Drawing from this dictum, other Philosophers who saw how religion was being used to control, oppress and manipulate the people further pushed the idea that “Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions” to a level that portrayed its adherents as incapable of redemption at least by their faith or religion. They are perceived as having minds altered by the power of the drug called faith.
This is only half truth, in the sense that religion or any value or belief system is capable of good and bad uses. A very high percentage of the world population believe in some higher power as expressed through the world major and minor religions.
As a Christian and a minister of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, I have observed that true adherents do things that portray them as having altered minds. For instance, it takes an “altered mind” to forgive your enemies and do good to those who despitefully use you. It takes an “altered mind” to visit prisoners especially in developing or under-developed countries with very deplorable living conditions.
It certainly takes an “altered mind” to provide housing, clothing and food for people who have raped, maimed, robbed, abused and destroyed the lives of other members of the society.
While the normal or natural mind would prescribe punitive response to crime and criminals, an “altered” or spiritual mind will prescribe redemptive response without minimizing the pain, horror and negative consequences of the criminal act.
The Christian approach to criminal justice is a combination of punishment and reformation. This is based on the belief that God can change the vilest criminal to become a responsible member of the society. Giving opportunity for serving prisoners, ex-convicts and especially those jailed wrongfully to be rehabilitated is not only a mandate for true Christians ( Matthew 25:31-46; Isaiah 61:1), it is also beneficial to the society that stands to reap the good that could come from these reformed members.
The Bible sees punishment as expression of love. It says it is the son the father loves that he chastises.
With the premise established above, I most humbly submit as follows;
- Churches should be first responders to disasters whether natural or man-made. We often quickly send help to victims of earthquakes, Tsunamis, flood, epidemic and hazards, but our response to ex-convicts’ rehabilitation and re-entry into the society is abysmal. The rate of recidivism is very high because a well thought out plan is not made to help them overcome the culture shock they experience once out of the prison. The prison system has its culture and the longer people are incarcerated, the more cut off they are from the society’s culture, norms and values. They need to be taught how to get back into the society by people who are not going to stigmatize, ostracize and condemn them. “Safe haven” should be provided for them by their faith groups away from the environment that fester their anti-social behavior. A loving church or religious group/ family is best equipped to provide the needed support. Housing, education, jobs and means to reconnect with family members should be provided. Providing housing in the same crime infested neighborhood that may have encouraged their criminal behavior has proved to be counterproductive. The current half way house system that house ex-convicts together is not good enough as they still harbor the institutional way of thinking. A housing system like the “Next step housing at Hope Hall” of Hope Hall Inc based in Aurora Colorado is highly recommended. This model which is Christian faith based established by The Redeemed Christian Church of God, Dayspring center, Aurora CO places ex-convicts in homes populated by regular people without criminal background who are loving and patient enough to provide support to the ex-convicts and help them reintegrate into society. Here apart from housing, substance abuse counseling is offered, education and job training is offered, spiritual counseling is also offered as well as community service.
The success of this model is based on our values which are Christian, freedom of our residents to attend any church of their choice, collaboration but not assimilation and interdependence.
- Faith groups and churches should assist members in finding ways to actively participate in social transformation process through community service. The more members find needs in the society and fill them, the more they will find value in themselves and cultivate healthy ways of being useful to society even as they in the process make life worthwhile for others.
- The growing dissatisfaction, divisions, conflicts and frustrations in the church could be eliminated if leadership empower their members so “their hands can find things to do” for the less privileged.
- Churches should be intentional about community service like rehabilitation and reformation of prisoners by establishing support services like housing, jobs and other social welfare programs instead of looking to the government alone to provide these services. Instead of building huge monuments and cathedrals, churches should build lives. We are called by the Bible to be repairers of breaches and restorers of desolate places and lives.
- Churches should jettison denominational differences and find ways to collaborate by sharing information, resources, ideas and funds to address the injustice in our criminal justice system especially prison congestions, long pre-trial detention, dehumanization and other ills in the system. In Nigeria PFN (Pentecostal Fellowship of Nigeria) and CAN (Christian Association of Nigeria) should work with other non affiliated groups and NGOs to forge an alliance to lobby the government for reforms in the prison and criminal justice systems. The call is for collaboration or integration and not ecumenism or assimilation which doctrinal differences will not allow. The main line denominations like the Catholic, Methodist and Anglican churches should open their doors to their Pentecostal and Charismatic brothers so that they could glean from their experience in this field since they have been involved much longer.
- Christian churches should find ways to interface with other religions like Islam in alleviating these problems and assist each other by sharing ideas, logistics and funds so that greater good could be done for more people.
- Existing organizations like CURE should be considered “good soil” to sow. Church leaders should encourage their members to support such groups financially and in other ways so that more people will be aware of these unacceptable practices and injustice in our criminal justice and prisons system.
Let me conclude by saying that there are a lot of people who have committed crimes and done things that should have landed them in jail but were either not caught or managed to escape imprisonment. They should see themselves in these prisoners and ex-convicts and rise up to support them.
Thanks for the opportunity to be a part of this conference.
Vincent Omegba
Pastor, The Redeemed Christian Church of God, Dayspring Center
President, Hope Hall Inc
16748 E.Iliff Ave, Aurora CO 80013.
303-306-0444
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The Role of the Churches and Mosques
in Criminal Justice System/
Prison Reforms
By Fr Enyeribe Oguh, SJ
REFORMS AD EXTRA
Strong Legal/Moral Education and Practice
Good laws are made to benefit the society at large. At the same time, laws are indicative of the imperfections of the human society. If humans were angels, laws would have been totally pointless as men would by their nature know and do what is right always. Hence, laws help to regulate human behaviors and to control unseemly human excesses. As Martin Luther King, Jr. says, laws may not make a man love me, but it can stop him from lynching me. One becomes a criminal by being convicted of breaking the criminal laws of the state. The churches and mosques have an urgent role of educating their members on the stipulations of laws and statutes of the state. Sometimes some people commit crimes out of ignorance of the laws. But before the magistrate, ignorance of the law does not usually stand up as a strong defense. Ancient Romans had this saying, ignorantia leges neminsu non excusat (ignorance of the law excuses no one). Since the churches and mosques are places where huge numbers of the citizens gather frequently, efforts should be made to inform them about the dictates of the constitution of the land. Rather than teaching only about the laws of God in the Bible or Koran, pastors, priests, and Imams can also use the pulpit or other means to inform their followers about the laws of the land. It is almost treasonable felony for Christians or Muslims to know so much about the laws of the ancient Israelites and the Arabs in their Holy Books, but know very little about the laws of their own homelands.
One of the raison d’être of religion is to aid people to live a good moral life. Hypocrisy in the practice of the moral dictates of the Mosaic laws was condemned by all the prophets from Moses to John the Baptist. Jesus redefined the laws and strongly repudiated pharisaic attitude to morality. The Qur’an received by the Holy Prophet Mohammed states in many clear terms that the way to paradise is through the practice of morality and not by careless living. The churches and mosques, therefore, should not only teach but practice what they believe. On this score, churches and mosques need to ensure that their ministers are given sound moral and excellent integral formation for the growth of their organizations and the human society. As leaders their influence, attitudes, and actions would seriously impact on their followers and the society. Mahatma Gandhi once famously stated that if Christians truly practiced the teachings of their Master, Jesus Christ, he would have been tempted to convert to Christianity. Majority of the people in the Nigerian prisons are probably not pagans but Christians and Muslims. Of course, one reason for this is that majority of the populace are either Christians or Muslims. But the truth is that if the majority of those behind bars in Nigerian prisons were faithfully practicing the moral principles they were taught in Sunday schools, catechism classes, or at the Madrasah Islamiyyah a good many of them would not have ended up in the prisons today. Thus, religious organizations should intensify efforts to teach their members not only religious dogmas but also sound moral principles. Above all, the leadership of these organizations would help the criminal justice system greatly by taking the lead in observing the sound morality that they teach.
Growing the Human and Socio-economic Capital
Poverty is one of the primary causes of conflicts and a strong inducement to commit crimes. It is a major obstacle to peace, justice, and the rule of law. A person cannot live a normal life or submit entirely to the law if he/she is unable to find enough food to survive. Most people spend their entire lives struggling to make ends meet. Yet for many, these ends never meet. Aware of the universal indignity of poverty, the United Nations has singled out global “Poverty Eradication” as one of its key Millennium Development Goals. Perhaps when this is achieved the level of crimes in the society will astronomically decrease, but presently a huge fraction of humanity live below the poverty margin. In fact an influential economist, Paul Collier, has made a strong case that more than a billion people in the world (mostly from the so-called third world countries) currently live below the poverty margin of less than one US dollar per day. Several factors account for this, including: historical injustices, high mortality rates, the scourge of HIV/AIDS, high infant and maternal mortality rates, harsh global economic policies, high unemployment rates owing to non-existent jobs and lack of marketable skills. Where do the churches and mosques come in here?
Early missionary activities in Africa gained an impressive and lasting foothold on the continent not by the force of arms (a colonial technique that failed neither to impress nor endure), but by establishing many schools, colleges, and hospitals. Several pioneer African educationists and nationalists were the products of these missionary schools. The same story is true of the advancement of Islam on the continent. The early Islamic traders and Jihadists who brought religion to Africa also founded Madrasahs not only to propagate Islam and the Qur’an but also to teach science and Islamic law. In many countries in Africa, the governments have taken over many of these schools but have been unable to maintain the high quality of teaching and learning that characterized these formerly mission schools. Although many churches and mosques have continued to establish schools, colleges, and universities, they should be encouraged by the government to do so by removing many of the petty bottlenecks that frustrate and atrophy genuine service. The churches and mosques, however, ought to draw from the original charism and objective of the missionary founders that saw education as a powerful means to empowering a people and not for impoverishing them for personal aggrandizement. In the course of my growth and formation, I have attended at least three Catholic or religious schools and I can attest to the high standard of teaching and morality in these schools. To date I have never heard of anyone from any of my former schools who has ended up behind bars. Such level of standards should be maintained and enforced in all private and/or religious schools.
In addition, several churches and mosques are either an international organization or have international partners. This partnership can be used as a powerful means of attracting foreign aid or investment into several countries to sprinkle the socio-economic seeds on the ground. I know of many Catholic Archdioceses and agencies in Europe and the United States that have continued to support the initiative of many Catholic Bishops and religious organizations in Africa. For instance the CIDJAP [Center for International Development, Justice and Peace] – an organization that has brought tremendous development in Enugu state and founded by Fr Ike Obiora – could not have had so much impact without the consistent assistance from Misereor in Germany, Caritas in Rome, Catholic Relief Services in Ireland, and so on. These forms of initiatives and partnerships should be encouraged or explored by other religious bodies. If a youth is out of a job for a long time and has no foreseeable means of livelihood, he may be forced into crime as a last resort to avoid starvation. Or he may choose the Tunisian Mohammad Bouazizi option of suicide as a final protest against a suffocating system.
Establish Justice and Peace Commissions / Justice and Reconciliation Clinics
In response to the call from the Second Vatican Council for “some agency of the universal church to be set up for the world-wide promotion of justice for the poor,”[1] Pope Paul VI established the Catholic Commission for Justice and Peace in 1967. With his Apostolic Constitution “Pastor Bonus,” Pope John Paul II in 1988 changed the agency’s name from the Commission for Justice and Peace to the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace. This Council which is now replicated in every Catholic diocese and parish with the name “Justice and Peace Commission” tries to promote the transformation of society based on the social teachings of the Church and the principles of equality, solidarity, human rights, and human dignity. Once it identifies a situation of injustice, or where human dignity is in chains, it strives to analyze the situation to understand the proximate and root-causes of the injustices, and plans actions or interventions to remedy the social order in the light of faith. Because the Commission has been such a breath of fresh air and a useful conflict management medium to the Church for more than forty years now, I make bold to recommend its model to other churches and mosques around the world. Several cases ranging from marital problems and domestic violence to land/property disputes as well as youth empowerment and environmental justice matters come before the Commissions. These cases are often treated with dispatch, confidentiality, compassion, and expertise that one does not often get from the adversarial system of the courts. Many of the complainants go home satisfied and even reconciled with their opponents. Simply put, the Commission is another form of Alternative Dispute Resolution method, but done with care and respect to the persons concerned, and often without consultation/service fees.
Similarly, the South African model of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission [TRC] led by Archbishop Desmond Tutu presents itself as a practicable positive intervention in the criminal justice system for use by the churches and mosques. The TRC though not perfect served almost like a healing clinic to both perpetrators and victims following the democratization process in South Africa in the late 90s. Due to its popularity and apparent success, this model has been replicated in many countries recovering from a divided past, including Rwanda, Sierra Leone, and Liberia. Churches and mosques can establish Justice and Reconciliation commissions or clinics with the objective of addressing instances of injustice and healing the wounds of conflict between their members and the larger society. As a clinic it would require the services of experts in the areas of law, psychology, and counseling. Local cases of religious violence between Christians and Muslims in northern Nigeria, for example, can be brought before such a clinic and if well handled can bring about reconciliation and even foster friendship in the embattled areas.
Mutual Cooperation/Collaboration not Confrontation
Two major landmarks in the city of Abuja are the Abuja Mosque and the Ecumenical Center. These epic buildings are so close that the call for prayer by the muezzin could easily be heard by the Pastors presiding over a convention at the Center. Proximity in this case offers a good opportunity for cooperation and collaboration. Christianity and Islamic religion are both offshoots of ancient Judaism. This common origin should be exploited to forge a rapprochement between members of the two great faiths. In Nigeria, for instance, more than 90% of the citizenry are either Muslims or Christians. This indicates that any collaborative initiative by these two faiths will be a great force to reckon with. We have recently seen how committed people, in this case, Muslims in Tunisia and Egypt have been able to bring down dictatorial regimes to pave way for the enthronement of freedom and democracy. A similar force by Christians brought down the infamous regime of Ferdinand Marcos in the Philippines during the last century. If these two faiths can seek close points of unity and agreement and de-emphasize the points of divergence and confrontation, the number of those who get locked up in prisons would most likely be halved. This new mutual understanding would hopefully reduce the incidences of religious suspicion, fundamentalism, wanton acts of terrorism, and would encourage respectful study or understanding of the doctrines and dogma of each faith.
Collaboration would also enable Muslim parents to send their wards to Christian schools without fear of indoctrination or proselytization. A good example of this collaboration in Abuja is the Loyola Jesuit College at Gidan Mangoro which for the more than fourteen years of its existence has had several Muslim and Christian students receiving instructions from Christian and Muslim tutors alike. Yet each student is allowed to practice his/her faith with dignity and freedom. More of this sort of venture should be encouraged in other parts of the country and should in fact be promoted in all Christian and Muslim countries. Cooperation breaks down the barriers of miscommunication and distrust as well as opens the avenue for mutual celebration of identities and creeds. Churches and mosques should arrange and encourage many interfaith social activities among the youth. Such activities may include: sports, debates, quizzes, excursions, Justice and reconciliation clinics, and so on. It can also comprise joint business ventures, interfaith worship, and mutually sponsored pilgrimages to the Holy Land, the Vatican City, and Mecca. Since those who eat together do not usually eat one another, these combined exercises would hopefully ameliorate the fractious relationship between Muslims and Christians in multi-religious countries and around the world.
A Moral Watchdog for the Society
Every mature democracy operates by a system of checks and balances. This is often provided for in the constitutional three-tier arrangement between the executive, legislature, and the judiciary. But it can also be maintained in a balance between the ruling government and a strong opposition. The unholy marriage between the Democrats and the Republicans on many policy issues in the US system is a good analogy. Organized religion can offer yet another effective check on the excesses of the government. The churches and mosques should act like moral watchdogs keeping the government on its guard. The objective here is to ensure the politicians do not sell the citizens off for a pair of sandals. As watchdogs, they will be able to use their good offices to negotiate a fair treatment of the workers, prisoners, political opponents, and citizens at large. They can also raise their voices against government abuses of human rights or arbitrary use of power against the masses. When all cowers to state coercion, the churches and mosques ought to use their high moral capital to advantage all. For example, during the repressive regime of Flight Lt Jerry Rawlings in the 1980s, it was the Catholic Church by means of the Catholic Standard then edited by Fr Charles Palmer Buckle (now Archbishop of Accra) that kept the fire of hope alive in the citizens as it relentlessly attacked those nasty laws.
In governments like we had until recently in Tunisia and Egypt, the churches and mosques had the onus of speaking up against government relaxation of the laws of the land to favor their families and friends. If the law prohibits the importation of certain substances or commodities like arms, narcotics, and so on, the religious organizations should then not sit and watch the cronies of the government trading and flaunting these contrabands. They are called upon to act positively to protect the moral soul of the nation against the dictates of a dictator or his/her cabal. Religious organizations should work with other Non-profit/Non-governmental organizations to oppose frequent or incessant imprisonment and/or torturing of opponents of a repressive regime. Similarly, the churches and mosques should also oppose the legalization of evil. Unjust laws should be made to appear reprehensible and be repudiated.
Reforms and revolutions are often best done from within than from without. In order to truly influence the actions of the government, the religious organizations must also be ready to participate in political governance. Some churches to date are still averse to political participation of their members or in some cases of their leadership in national governance. This scenario disadvantages the churches and makes them outsiders in the shaping of the mind and mores of the political gladiators. It also limits their access to the goings-on on crucial issues of the state for which their support or opposition might have made a great difference.
REFORMS AD INTRA: Dynamic Prison Ministry
One area where the role of churches and mosques is strongly and practically felt in the entire criminal justice system is in the prison ministry. Imams, priests, pastors, and several faith-based peoples frequently visit with prisoners and detainees to share the word of God with them. I enjoyed this wonderful opportunity for almost two years as a young Jesuit novice. We always looked forward to singing, clapping hands, and praying with the inmates of the Oko and Benin prisons in Benin City twice a week. Besides conducting prayer services, some of us were also engaged in counseling the inmates. Sometimes we acted as courier services for them with the permission of the wardens to carry their letters to their families and loved ones. There were also a few times we brought food items, educational materials and gifts to the prisoners. Usually many churches, private individuals, and organizations bring food and gifts to the prisoners.
Sadly, however, my prison ministry many years ago was basically pastoral and had little else beyond that. This is still what our Jesuit novitiate does till date. It is just about what most churches and mosques still do at the prisons, especially in Africa. The situation is so due to the fact that the prison authority has a set of regulations that controls what externs can or can’t do with the prisoners or in the prisons. For instance certain items like cigarette, drugs, alcohol, bottles, or weapons are prohibited as gifts to prisoners. Certain forms of messages cannot be taken out of or brought into the prisons by externs for the prisoners. The system is thus organized to ensure the maximum security of the prisons.
All the same, there is still a great deal that the churches and mosques can do within the legal latitude allowed. Imams, priests and pastors every so often serve on the board of the prisons council in some countries. This affords an enormous opportunity to influence the local policies and current attitudes in the respective prisons. Several prisoners are daily exposed to various forms of abuses ranging from sex to verbal and physical violence, and torture not only from fellow inmates, but also from the prison wardens. The churches and mosques can lobby at this policy making level to ensure that these violations of human dignity are curbed or curtailed.
In addition, the state of overcrowding, diseases, lousy diets, and poor sanitation is not strange to anyone who has ever visited any prisons in Nigeria. I believe that this scenario may not be much better elsewhere. In Ghana, for example, most of the prisons are still unbelievably the former Portuguese colonial forts and castles that were later converted to airless, dark, and gruesome slave forts for erring African slaves before they were shipped overseas. The Ghanaian government only raised the status of these former slave forts to medium security. Any situation in which human dignities are being violated, religious organizations have the divine mandate to act in favor of man. So, the churches and mosques need to rise up and challenge the government to treat prison inmates as images of God deserving of inalienable human dignity.
A number of churches and mosques have been able to build churches, mosques, or secure some worship space in some prisons. This is noble. At the same time, a serious attention also needs to be paid to the socio-economic aspects of the inmates. It is strong to argue that the high incidences of recidivism result from little or no socio-economic equipment of the prisoners before they are released into the society. The government has the duty to rehabilitate the prisoners. One way of doing this is to assist them to acquire some hard skills before the end of their time in jail. But of course, many governments do not do well here. So, the churches and mosques should step in to supplement the efforts of the state by building vocation institutes in some of the prisons. Obasanjo’s government, for instance, commissioned an open university for the Lagos state prisons during his second term as the democratic president of Nigeria.
Many people in the society view ex-convicts or indeed anyone who has spent some time in jail with much suspicion and disdain. Save in the case of high-profile political prisoners like Mandela or prisoners-of-war, most prisoners are often stigmatized or avoided by many people. One explanation for this is the fear of being attacked or victimized by the ex-jail bird, often assumed to have hardened up during his/her time behind bars. An arrangement can be made between the prison system, the families of convicts about to be discharged, and the church/mosque or religious affiliation of the convicts’ choice to prepare the people to receive the convict before he/she is released. He/she should also be made to commit to regular counseling or therapeutic visits with the ministers for a certain period of time. Similarly, not every minor miscreant should end up in jail. Some should be made to do some community service (as is done in the United States) that can be properly monitored by the government or by a designated religious organization. Yet as a deterrent to society, every concluded criminal case should be made to appear in a popular national daily, of course at the government’s expense. Public shaming is a strong deterrence against wrong-doing in many cultures, especially in Africa.
Conclusion
No society can exist without laws. Abrogate laws and all life will be chaos, miserable, nasty, brutish, and short.[2] Such a life is not worth living. To save humanity from this path of perdition and annihilation, laws are made by man (or received from God as the case of maybe) and given to the sovereign to implement for the good of all. In the implementation of these laws, sometimes errors are made and innocent people are wrongly penalized and their rights abused. Yet even the guilty also have rights and dignity that must be respected and preserved. This necessitates careful attention to both procedural and substantive justice on the part of state agencies. It also calls attention to frequent reforms in the criminal justice system. The condition of prisoners, ex-prisoners, and the prisons must be regularly reviewed.
But neither laws nor the state agencies alone are enough to make life worth living in the state. Other institutions like the churches and mosques also have their roles to play. These can collaborate with the state to entrench and spread the values of morality in the heart of their members. Morality makes the man. A morally sound person will be less likely to commit crimes than an immoral person. Churches and mosques have the duty to live by their beliefs and professions. They also have a moral responsibility to empower their members through establishing initiatives like schools, health centers, and strong enterprises where the youth can be gainfully employed. An idle mind is the devil’s workshop. Finally, the churches and mosques can collaborate to form pressure groups able to negotiate with the state for the rights of suffering citizens and the rights of prisoners and ex-convicts.
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The Ethiopian Justice System, Current Reform Efforts, Assessment, and Recommendations.
By: Demelash Kassaye
Addis Ababa University
School of Social Work and Social Development
Executive Summery
This presentation focuses on the comprehensive justice reform program that Ethiopia has conveyed to bring an overall change on the entire service of the justice system delivered since decades. In 1991, following many years of fighting led by various rebel movements, the Derg, as the Marxist regime which came into power in 1974 was replaced by coalition intent on establishing a democratic state.
A new constitution, enacted in 1995, provided a federal system of government in which sovereignty was to reside in “the Nations and Nationalities and Peoples of Ethiopia”. The new government soon embarked on a series of reforms designed to encourage the economic and social development of the country and reduce poverty. It was assumed that progress in these fields required to a complete overhaul of the justice system, allowing citizens to seek and obtain an affirmation of their rights as embodied in and guaranteed by the democratic new constitution. As is learned from state executive reports, it is found urgent to adapt its judicial system to the demands of the changing world economy, and political system.
The main findings of the study described that the current legislative and regulatory procedures are streamlined in one system for fastening the trial process. To this effect, respecting the right that the Ethiopian constitution bestowed to the regional states to form their own justice system, the proclamation that legally constituted different justice organs clearly stipulated the existence of the national committee constituted in comprising the regional states and the federal government to work on matters related with restoring justice in the country. The analysis of the present situations show that the current legislative and regulatory procedure is improved in resolving the fragmentation of the legal system, a lack of coherence between existing codes and laws and, as a result, an uncertainty as to the legal norm.
To keep the continuum of the change, the house of representatives decreed to convey the Business Process Reengineering, whereby, currently, the Ethiopian Police, Prosecution, and Court are streamlined in one pattern, from which the people are receiving justice from one office, which is equivalent to purchasing goods in one shop. This has brought the trial fasten and public satisfaction as well. However, though the penal code defines criminal liability, sanctions and parole, it is unclear whether there is a flow of information between the prison service and the police and Public Prosecution Service.
Possibly the most important shortcoming of the prison system and police generally is the insufficiency of training. The lack of clear provisions regarding the relations between prison employees and the inmates, as well as the poor conditions of police stations and prisons are also grave shortcomings. The budget of the prison that the government expend to run the programs in prison homes should improve to a certain level to better serve errant in prison.
____________________________________
Key Words: Ethiopia, justice, penal code, prison
Historical and constitutional background
After the down fall of the Marxist regime, of Ethiopia in 1991, the highly centralized system of the government was changed into a democratic and decentralized federal system. The constitution of the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia has been endorsed and adopted by the Nations, Nationalities and Peoples of Ethiopia, on 21 August, 1995. The constitution being confirmed by the participation of the people ensured to constitute a federal system of self determination of nine regions or states to which judicial and wide legislative and administrative powers are devolved. The elected House of Peoples’ Representatives is predetermined by the constitution as law-making organ in all matters to the federal jurisdiction.
The independence of the judiciary is protected by the Constitution of the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia. All the judicial functions of the two levels, the federal and state are left to the courts. Three hierarchies have been in place in composing the Federal Supreme Courts, The Federal High Court, and the Federal first Instance.
The same three-tier system obtains in each State under the names of State Supreme Court, Zonal or high court and Woreda Courts, (Comprehensive Justice System Reform Program Base Line Study Report, 2005). The Ethiopian Constitution has pronounced the legal provision to the federal and state legislatures to legally recognise the jurisdiction of Religious and Customary Courts. Besides, courts functioning in the form of Social Courts are serving the society even though they are not mentioned in the Constitution.
The Ethiopian Justice System
In Ethiopian justice system, as is in any other country, the justice system is not restricted to the provisions of the constitution, defining the structure and power of the court. It extends to other organs lined in restoring justice in the country, which have the role of facilitating the functioning of the courts, are charged with law enforcement or reach law. All these facilitating the trial process are interlinked one to another. As a result, any assessment focusing on the reform entail these to evaluate the whole system how it operates to satisfy needs of the people regarding justice. Therefore, the Justice system of Ethiopia has been formed in embedding the law making institutions, Institutions Facilitating the Functioning of the courts, Institutions Charged with Law Enforcement and Law.
Teaching and Research Institutions
The Law Making Institutions
Ethiopia is a democratic country. Two Law making institutions are constituted by the constitution: the House of Peoples’ Representatives and the House of the federation. Its law making procedure refers to parts of the justice system. The latter has indirect legislative function as it can determine civil matters, which requires the enactment of laws by the House of Peoples’ Representatives, (The FDRE, Constitution, 1995).
Institutions Facilitating the Functioning of the Courts
As is known, the Ministry of Justice has the task to advise the Federal Government in matters related with law. It works on identifying causes for the appearance of crime, modus operand of crime and design intervening strategies to narrow the possible opportunities of crime to happen. In the national regional states, the justice bureau is in charge of these roles.
Institutions Charged with Law Enforcement
In law enforcement practices, three bodies are recognised under the Ethiopian Justice system, having different functions. They are the Public Prosecution Service, The Federal Police, and the Federal Prison Commission. The Public Prosecution Office is formed under the Ministry of Justice. It is legitimized by law to prosecute federal crimes before Federal and State Courts. The Federal Police is constituted under the Ministry of Federal Affairs, are responsible to investigate federal crimes at federal and state levels. The state police have the power to investigate crimes limited under their jurisdiction and co-operate with the Federal Police, if necessary. The Federal Prison commission is responsible to the management and administration of prisons and rehabilitation of convicts. In the national regional states, the state prison commission is responsible to implement the roles expressed in above.
Law Teaching and Research Institutions
The educational policy and strategy of the country emphasised to fill the scarcity of skilled manpower by training professionals in the stream of law. Therefore a number of public and private universities and colleges launched the program a years back. These provide legal education with the levels of Diploma, LLB, Masters of Law, and PhD in law. Besides of this, the Justice and Legal System Institute, established in 1997, undertake research activities to identify the major problems and recommend the way forward to satisfy needs and expectations of justice seekers.
Current Reform Efforts
The current reform program carried out in the country has come with the most blatant deficiencies of the justice systems in the country. These were insufficient number of skilled and educated judges and public prosecutors, the inappropriate and inefficient administration of the courts, and the lack of clarity and coherence in respect of existing laws and codes (Comprehensive Justice System Reform Program Base Line Study Report, 2005). In these three major sectors, reforms were initiated and implemented.
Training of Judges, other Justice Personnel, Police Officers and Prison Administrators
The reform program has proposed phases to gradually fill the gaps identified in the first preliminary surveys. Phases included in the implementation program were classified in three successive programs: providing training to judges, public prosecutors and administrators. The educational institutions selected in the program were the Faculty of Law of Addis Ababa University, and the Civil Service College, and the Ethiopian Police University College and Regional Police Training Centres. The programs of all the higher education institutions were aimed at upgrading knowledge, skills and attitude of low level judges and prosecutors during court recess time and enhance the competence of police personnel and prison administration officials. Newly established universities, sponsored by the central government are expected to offer similar upgrading courses, seminars and workshops in matters of law, criminal justice and criminology. The program has used the country to lessen the gap of qualified judges, police and prison administrators with certain degree.
Court Administration Reform
Various ways used by different countries were used to experience `the benefit of the reform in the court administration. Pilot projects were developed under the control of the Federal Supreme Court in collaboration with some donor agencies funding multifarious reforming processes. The program was extended to Federal and some State courts and it is eventually assumed to over widen the coverage of the program throughout the country.
Law Reform and Harmonization
The harmonization process and amending of the law were held in valuing the constitutional pillars of the country, in which Ministry of Justice and Legal system research Institutes managed to control the plan developed to its effect. The process has considered two crucial points which are codification and updating existing law and codes as part of this important process.
Assessment on Law Enforcement Institutions
Assessments of Each Justice Institutions problems are identified as the composing factors contributing to the failure of reaching improved service to justice seekers. Currently, many changes are achieved as though the outcome of Business Process Re-engineering is introduced in the public service program throughout the country, (Comprehensive Justice System Reform Program Base Line Study Report, 2005).
The Public Prosecution Service and its structure
The public prosecution service is structured as the executive branch of the government. Proclamation 4/1995 known as the Proclamation on definition of powers and duties of the Executive Organs of the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia set its structure where it is to be and therefore the Ethiopian Public Prosecutor Service has the Federal and state structure at the regions level.
The Police
The Ethiopian Police system is organized in two known as the Federal Police Service and nine national regional states and two councils of city administration.
The Federal Police
The federal police are legally founded with the proclamation number of, 313/2003. Article 6 of this proclamation defined the objectives of the commission as maintaining the peace and security of the public due considering the constitution and other laws emanated out of the constitution.
The regional police
The Regional states are allowed to owe their own police force. Their structure is more or less similar with the structure used in the Federal Police. The respective state authorities have the power to assign the regional police commissioner. The regional services are also independent when it comes to administering and implementing the actual police work.
Relation between the federal and state polices
Both have relation in matters of developing operational strategies of the country in policing. Therefore, the regional state polices frequently ask support of the federal police when is necessary. They have good relation in setting the recruitment criteria and training to produce skilled and trained police professionals.
Police training method has shifted into active learning than the traditional lecture type of teaching method. The aim is to produce the police officers well aligned with the actual police work where it is on the ground. The federal police have got a training centre for Federal Police, a police university college where higher police officials of the whole country are trained and regional colleges and training centres where police staffs are trained for primary police work.
Penitentiary System
The system is relatively young, compared to the Continental-European and Anglo-American systems. In 1994, a prison administration was established under the rule of emperor Haileselassie. During the Derg regime prisons were neglected and served as the place of imprisoning citizens those who are against the Marxist political ideology. After the fall of that regime, the current government has determined to reform the whole prison system.
Structure and organization of the Federal and State Prison services
Federal Level
The Ministry of Federal Affairs is responsible to coordinate the work of prison administration. From Articles 51 and 52 of the Constitution it seems to follow that every single state has the autonomous power to organize and administrate the prison system in its own way, provided this is compatible with provisions in the constitution.
Federal prisons are located at Addis Ababa and Dire Dawa. The Federal Prisons have branches in Zeway, Robbit and Kaliti (Addis Ababa). Women prisoners are detained in separate units
Observation and major shortcomings related to the Law Enforcement Institutions
The public prosecution
The shortage of prosecutors in the Ethiopian Public Prosecution Service, the failure of those that do exist to meet minimum qualifications, the lack of training, the appalling conditions in which they work, the backlogs which they face and other circumstances create a worrisome and alarming situation. A democratic federation requires a well-functioning criminal justice system without a weak link. In Ethiopia, even though, there are achievements scored from the reform program, it needs the office strive for the betterment of justice in the country. The Public Prosecution Service, however, showed encouraging results to improve the bad situation experience in the past.
The Police
It is common knowledge in Ethiopia that the police wrestle with a poor image caused from the police being an instrument to suppress the interest of the previous Monarchical and Marxist regimes. Despite of doing much to change this image is gradually improving. As history of the country tells, until 1991, the police was a means for the former regime to realize its objectives, which were often not in the interests of individuals’ citizens. Although the police have on the concept of community policing, and already operate to some extent on the basis of policing by consent, it will simply take a long time before this is actually acknowledged and recognized by the public. Nonetheless, the reasons for the public image should be viewed from two perspectives in which the public works as partner of police in areas of identifying police priorities and allotting resources to advance proactive policing.
To this end, the police have been demilitarized and military ranking has been abandoned. This maintains the positive image of the police not as a service of power and oppression rather than a public service-oriented.
Penitentiary
The federal and state prisons systems have many shortcomings. I would just like to highlight the following ones
Training
The most important shortcomings encountered the prison system are in the field of training i.e.
a) Training offered to improve skill of civil prison staff is inadequate
b) There is no special training on handling of custodians in police
stations
c) Trainings offered in police schools are not task oriented
d) Scarcity of professional trainers in the field of law, psychology and
sociology.
Provisions to govern the relations between prison employees and the inmates
After the step down of the Derg regime, the police was demilitarized by law. The challenge encountered was to bring attitudinal change of police officers served the past two regimes for long. This has also been the case for prisons’ administration and prison police. Based on the observation made on the visited police stations and prisons, it is easy to understand that prison police are predominantly represented, and civilian staff is insignificantly present. Therefore, in the previous days, the administration of prisons and police stations is more of a military rather than a civilian character. This is clearly reflected in an attitude and mentality of prison police towards prisoners that is based on obedience and oppression, leading in some cases to human rights abuses. Despite of this, against from the aforementioned background, declaring clear provisions regulating the relations between inmates and the prisons administration not only avoid the earlier military mentality, it also gives wide room to avoid unfit practices to operate. This used to make the service of the parole well aligned with the international standards.
Conditions of detention
The physical conditions of the visited police stations and prisons are intolerable in terms of hygiene, sanitation, health service, food and education facilities. Contrary to international standards and to Ethiopian laws, there is almost no separation of detainees based on the seriousness of crimes they have been convicted.
A complicating aspect of the bad conditions of detention is the overcrowding of police stations and prisons. As a matter of fact, overcrowding in police stations and in prisons makes the justice system suffer for awaiting of trial, or pre-trial detention.
Lack of Budget
There is no need for research or studies in order to conclude that police stations and prisons have been neglected for a long time. By the same token, it is obvious that the administration of prisons has lacked and currently lacks budget.
Way forward to prosecution, police and prison administration
- The present reform program has scored change on the service of Ethiopian Justice, but needs to think of the progress how it can continue, so as to better serve the people.
- The service that the police deliver should be in line with the philosophy of community policing and extend the service up to maintaining quality life of the people
- The training manuals and methods of teaching should embrace some of the international standards, and interlink the cross-cutting issues of the institutions in phases of the training stages
- The training given must focus on problem based and interactive learning in order to bring behavioural change among police and prison administration
- Adequate resource relevant to education, health, and others should be in place to improve the management of inmates in prison
References
Comprehensive Justice Reform Program. (2005). Base Line Study Report. Published
The Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia, 1995.
The Proclamation of the Ethiopian Federal Police, 2003.
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Texas After Violence Project
persons affected by severe violence
by Celeste Henery, PhD
It is with great pleasure and honor that I am here on behalf of the Texas After Violence Project from Austin, Texas in the United States. Our organization documents the narratives of persons affected by severe violence in the state of Texas. We do so by video-taping our interviews and, with the author’s permission, we make them publicly available through our archive with the Human Rights Documentation Initiative at the University of Texas at Austin. We have interviewed family members of murder victims and executed persons, attorneys, judges, journalists, social service providers, activists, scholars, clergy, among others. Bringing this wide variety of voices into a common archive for the public record is part of our effort to complicate the conversation in the US and beyond around the effects of violence and the criminal justice system. Our interviews affirm that the impacts of violence ripple through society and that the two-sided urges of right and wrong do not advance our social conversation. Violence is a human rights issue globally and in constant need of voice.
A large part of the ethos of our work is listening, the act of holding space for individuals whose lives have frequently been upturned, imprinted or mobilized around acts of violence.
Narrators must give consent to make their interviews public. This process requires patience and can be disappointing when final consent is not given, yet the interview i tself encapsulates the quiet work of bearing witness to stories, perspectives and experiences that often do not make it beyond the reductive American public discourses of victim and criminal, hero and enemy.
I am an anthropologist; I trust in the process and work of pursuing and listening to human stories. I became an interviewer for the Project because of my ethnographic research experience studying questions of mental health and race in Brazil and the US. My principal research focused on a group of older black women in an underserved urban neighborhood in Brazil who formed a singing group to improve their mental health. Almost all of the women were taking anti-anxiety medication and some had been institutionalized. Believing that drugs were not the solution, a local activist put this group together to give these women a space to talk about the stresses of their lives which were not merely chemical, but came from the complexities of being single mothers, living in economic poverty, enduring violence and drug trafficking in the neighborhood and often their children’s involvement in the trade. Their narratives of visiting their sons in prison and the humiliation and fear they experienced gave painful shape to their life stories and flowed alongside their own bouts of time spent in state run mental asylums.
Listening to and recording these women’s accounts illuminated several realities. Of particular note was the trials of black people’s experiences, trajectories and time spent sustaining their mental health while interacting with State-run institutions that possess many of our society’s un-well. Spending time with these women also evidenced the power of giving voice to the stories of people rarely heard and whose understandings are seldom welcomed into the public record.
Fearful of being forgotten, the women agreed to be a part of my research because it was an opportunity to have their lives and stories brought into view. For me, their testimonies complicated what it means to be healthy or well in societies fraught with gendered racism, with populations lacking an understanding of mental illness, maintaining underdeveloped ideas of mental health, while at the same time relying on institutions to hold individuals whose behaviors they do not comprehended and don’t know how to alter.
Of the over 2 million people in state and federal custody in the US, experts believe that 500,000 are mentally ill. The statistics report that 16 to 25% of the prison population can be classified as severely mentally ill, in this case meaning they fit the psychiatric definitions of bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, or major depression. Similarly, there are estimates that 70% of youth in youth detention centers suffer from mental health disorders. In Texas, of the 170,000 prisoners, approximately 10% of the prison population have a diagnosis of severe mental illness that would qualify as a “priority population” for mental health services (Texas Council on Offenders with Mental Impairments Biennial Report). Conservative estimates also reveal that 5-10% of death row inmates suffer from serious mental illness. The odds are 8 to 1 in Texas that persons with mental illness will be in prison rather than in a psychiatric hospital.
While race is not a factor in the prevalence of mental illness – that is, mental illness occurs in the same rates across race and ethnicity – its influence in the prison system is evident. Almost 70% of the incarcerated population is comprised of Black and Latinos even though they account for only 25% of the US population. There are significant gaps in the diagnosis and treatment of persons with mental illness by race. Yet, black people are more likely to receive their first diagnosis of and treatment for their mental illness through the prison system.
The picture I paint echoes what the women’s stories evoked: a vision of the painful intersection of questions surrounding race, mental illness and the criminal justice system. Moreover they gesture to the overlapping stories, frequently silenced, of mental illness within the black community and incarcerated persons with mental illness, both black and other. All together, this silence is staggering.
I now turn to a short case study from Austin. Sophia King was a dark-skinned 23-yearold mother of two, who was killed by a police officer on a June morning in 2002. She was shot at the public housing complex where she resided paying low-rent and struggling to hold a job in spite of her high school education. On the day of Ms. King’s death, a manager from the Housing Authority was attempting to document Sophia’s irrational and disturbing behavior, ostensibly in hopes of creating grounds for her eviction, and Ms. King was shot after she apparently went after the manager with a knife.
The early morning blaring music and the water found running from taps throughout Sophia’s house the day she died were nuisances to her neighbors and led them to refer to and fear her as “not right,” “a bully” and of course “crazy.” Her behavior no doubt warranted a call for assistance, however the descriptions of her likeability and notably her illogical ways of being expressed in the case never advanced into a substantive discussion of this woman’s illness.
There was no medication found in Ms. King’s bloodstream when she died; and the irony, I imagine, is that these ways of being were the iterations as well as the tools she was using, without medication, to handle all that she did not want to feel or hear –voices that may have directed her attention and rage towards the housing manager. It was a profoundly desperate and tragic morning.
Ms. King’s life ended abruptly and in crisis. Her death at the hands of a police officer sadly reads in the US like the inevitable end to a young, poor black woman whose police file was significantly larger than her psychiatric or medical records. While her runs-in with the police, according to news report, began in 1997, her diagnosis of schizophrenia and time spent at the state hospital did not happen until 2000. We can only guess at how the early manifestations of her illness could offer another prism through which to view her complicated and short life.
I am empathetic to the story of Ms. King because of how often stories like hers are not told, particularly if they end in incarceration rather than a public, violent death. Gabe, my partner in this presentation and who has worked for the organization since its inception in 2007, will go deeper into accounts of both TAVP interviews with persons or cases regarding the severely mentally ill and questions around mental illness within the criminal justice system. There is visible path that leads economically poor persons with mental illness, often of color, into the criminal justice system rather than into mental health care services.
Prisons can become spaces where persons receive mental health care, but they too are spaces that more often silence and simplify stories of mental illness and definitions of mental health. They are systems that sustain notions of fear, criminality and violence as dominant narratives that are privileged over the life stories of those individuals within their hold.
My work at TAVP seeks to continue the documentation of the less heard stories specifically those of people of color and mental illness within the criminal justice system. Providing a space for grieving parents to speak of their inability to get mental health care for their child before they wound up in prison, or attorneys’ vantages on criminal insanity as a defense in US courts, or the frequent references to the quantities of persons with mental illness on death row are just some of the stories that, when made public, can help to inform, teach and most compellingly, personalize and diversify the discussions on the institutions and social problems we wish to and must address.
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Prison conditions:
CONAKRY GUINEA
By James Emile GBALLET
Executive Director of Guinea CURE
The first and second world war will have effects on the decision to reexamine the question of human dignity.
The aim to reach is the respect, the protect and security of human being at any level in the life such as the family area , the administration area, or in prisons.
What do we notice in Guinea prisons ?
OVER POPULATION IN PRISONS
In Guinea as wherever on the continent problems of prisons areas are generally the same: over population due to over aged prisons.
The Conakry Central prison built in 1958 was destined to receive 400 prisoners but today, more of 1200 several prisoners live there.
The prison of Conakry, the biggest one, is not the same faced with such same difficulties.
DISEASES IN PRISONS
The full number of prisoners create all conditions for many diseases.
In September 2002, at Conakry central prison , cholera is increased with three hundred (300) cases, Tuberculosis continues creating many damages.
At the central prison as the other ones inside Guinea for instance N’Zerekoré , Labé … ,malaria and breathing infections are a lot.
The same thing for A.I.D.S (Acquired Immune Defiance Syndrome) goes on and cause many victims.
UNDERFOOD IN PRISONS
In the central prison as the other ones of Guinea, prisoners are underfed ; a meal by day and that meal about three rice spoons bad quality and a few oil on the rice .That brings a lack of vitamin for their health ; 350 cases in 2003.
CLEANLINESS AND HEALTH IN PRISONS
In all prisons in Guinea ,the prisoners are faced with problems of cleanliness. The prisons stink, disturbing the prisoners then cause problem of health. The Prisoners ²are not tended in prisons so they are not healthy at all.
EDUCATION IN PRISONS
In Guinea prisons ,there is no school program at primary level ,secondary level and highest level. There is no professional education or some lectures that could develop the ability of prisoners. That could make them responsible towards the social community.
THE JURIDICAL ASSISTANCE
The prisoners in prisons are forgotten to be judged so that they waste many times .They don’t their rights or their duty and they hope one day to be judged in vain. The last solution is escape from the prison.
THE RELAPSING
The Guinea’s prisons are not the areas to re socialize plenty of prisoners . Many are released and put again in prison for having committed an offence. They are not able to be well bred and become use full for the society. Because the problem of education has failed during the imprisonment.
Seven(7) out ten(10) prisoners relapse.
Conditions of imprisonment in Conakry Guinea are very difficult. It is one of Africa countries having many problems to satisfy people’s elementary needs.
PROPOSITION OF SOLUTION
In order to secure the respect of prisoners we are going to establish a cooperation with the penitentiary administration so as to improve the conditions of imprisonment.
Knowing that the situation will be step by step improved , we shall struggle reach the aim; putting prisoners in the best conditions.
We shall make prisoners carry on a trade so that to be responsible, useful in the society after releasing.
To build some new in order to reduce the great number of prisoners in old prisons in Guinea and to rehabilitate some of them in a bad state.
International CURE must sometime be present near by African CURE chapter. So that to prevent African governmental authorities from disturbing international rules of imprisonment.
The penitentiary administration will have educate penitentiary agents about how to respect the human rights of prisoners.
Man must respect the time of judgment of persons who come under the law. Don’t waste the time to judge somebody under the law in prison. Judging all prisoners beyond 10 years.
I THANK YOU
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SAFETY FOR WOMEN IN PRISON
DURING PREGANCY, LABOR AND DELIVERY
By Jean Basinger, Iowa CURE
Thank you for giving me the opportunity to speak about the important issue of safety for women in prison during pregnancy, labor, and delivery. My remarks will be based on the 2010 report of the National Women’s Law Center and The Rebecca Project for Human Rights entitled, Women in Prison. This is a state by state report card and analysis of U.S. Federal Policies on conditions of confinement for pregnant and parenting women. It includes an analysis of state and federal policies on prenatal care, shackling, and alternative sentencing and Prison nurseries. It also includes those women in immigration centers. The report is an effort to help those who work with pregnant women in prison to improve the laws and policies regarding the treatment the women receive.
As a way of introduction I would like to mention my experience working many years as a labor and delivery room nurse, and 12 years as a registered nurse on a chemical dependency treatment unit where we often had pregnant women who were court committed for treatment and were transported to court and medical appointments by the sheriff’s department and were required to wear shackles, handcuffs and heavy belly shackles.
I have also been working with groups in my state in an effort to get effective laws passed regarding the treatment of pregnant women and girls. in state prisons, county jails, and detention centers.
The report of the Rebecca Project focuses on four areas: 1. prenatal care, including proper diet, Medical exams, HIV screening, etc, 2. shackling of pregnant women during transportation, labor, delivery, and postpartum recovery, 3. family based treatment s an alternative to Incarceration, 4. Prison nurseries.
Each state was asked to submit answers to a set of questions related to each topic and these answers were analyzed and the states were given grades in each area. Today I will share with you the section on the shackling during labor and delivery. My state received a low grade in this area and is now actively engaged in working to pass a law regarding this important issue.
The questions asked regarding this issue were as follows:
l. Does the state have a statute that explicitly restricts the department of corrections’ routine use of restraints during labor and delivery? (Only six states have such a law.)
2. If the state does not have a statue does the Department of Corrections have a written policy that adequately limits the use of restraints on pregnant women?
3… Does the state require training for individuals handling and transporting incarcerated persons needing medical care or those dealing with pregnant women specifically?
4. Does the state have a high-level official responsible for determining whether a pregnant woman poses a security risk and needs to be restrained?
5. Does the medical staff have input on the decision to use restraints and what type of restraints are used?
6. Does the state require each incident where restraints are used to be reported and reviewed by an independent body?
7. Does the state’s policy include consequences for individuals and/or institutions found to be in violation of state policy regarding the use of restraints?
My own state of Iowa has no statue regarding the use of restraints. We are in the process of trying to get a law passed that would prohibit the use of restraints on a pregnant inmate in labor unless it was determined by the Warden or another designated staff that she was a flight risk.
The Department of Corrections has argued that they did not use shackles for women in labor so it was not necessary to have a policy or law prohibiting the practice. We disagree. We feel that this leaves the door open for staff to make a decision to use restraints and also for a changes by the administration. We also feel that it is not enough simply to have a DOC policy against this practice. We must have a law which will also include County jails, juvenile and immigration detention centers. These are the facilities where there is most likely to be abuse due to lack of training and onsite medical staff.
The shackling of women during labor and delivery puts the mother and baby at risk because it makes it very difficult for the woman to follow instructions of the medical staff and it can cause her distress which will be transmitted to the baby. It also interferes with the ability of the medical staff to give medical assistance, evaluate the progress of the labor, and give emergency care.
Passing such a bill is just a beginning. Proper training and monitoring for staff must be put into place in order to bring institutions into compliance.
If you are not aware of the practices in your country regarding the care of women in your prisons and other detention centers during pregnancy, labor, and delivery, I do hope you will make an effort to investigate these practices, and to become an advocate on this issue.
Jean Basinger, Iowa CURE
1335 48th St.
Des Moines, IA 50311
USA
e-mail: Jean Basinger@gmail.com
Source: *The Rebecca Project for Human Rights-National Women’s Law Center, Women Behind Bars
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THE NECESSITY TO IMPLEMENT
ADEQUATE AND GENUINE PRISON REFORMS
By KASSI DJEINZOU AUGUSTIN
EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR
GHANA CURE INTERNATIONAL
Prisons are defined as buildings where people are kept as punishment for crime they have committed or while they are waiting for trial. International CURE even believes that prisons are used only for those who absolutely must be incarcerated. From “long walk to freedom” Nelson Mandela states that prisons are designed to break one’s spirit and destroy one resolve.
Today, in spite of multiple sensibilizations and efforts made in our countries and all over the world, Human Right advocates still become indignant before the pitiful, inhumane, miserable and infernal conditions related to the prisons. For this reason, a need to carry out adequate and genuine prison reforms is necessary.
I / PRISON AND INMATES CONDITIONS
In our different countries the prison conditions generally show the same features. The case of Ghana is clear and easy to understand.
Ghana judicial system is run by the Supreme Court. The main department in charge of prison issues is naturally the Ghana Prison Service in cooperation with the ministry of Justice and the ministry of Interior. It’s worth mentioning that Ghana is one of the African countries that is a member of some International Treaties on Death Penality and Human Rights such as (OPCAT), Optional Protocol for the Convention Against Torture and other Cruel, Human or Degrading Treatment or Punishment ( has signed but not yet ratified) and the African Charter on Human and People’s Rights.
As in many African countries, it did not escape economic and social poverty. It’s naturally one of the grounds that affects the population greatly and leads a large number of people into prison.
The Ghana prison facilities accommodate all varieties of persons. We may find men, old people, and juveniles including foreigners. The majority of detentions derive from stealing, manslaughter, drug, robbery, fraud, murder, assault, threat of death, unlawful entry, conspiracy, rape, causing harm and defilement.
According to United Nations Declaration of Human Rights from Article 7, all are equal before the law and any kind of discrimination is prohibited; we all know that degrading and inhuman treatments are likewise unacceptable by the constitution; however the contrary is practiced within our prison centers.
Many fatal cases in detention centers are really lamentable and pitiful.
In prison, the inmates’ living conditions are very harsh. Due to the lack of means and corruption, indigent inmates are faced with unfair justice. Some inmate had been jailed for many years without being on trial. Let’s outline that inadequate remuneration of the prison staffs increases unavoidably corruption.
Prison facilities’ workshops do not exist. If by any chance we could find some existing workshops there, they are not equipped to reach the outcome of the inmates rehabilitation.
For a long time thousands of detainees have been living in places we may describe as ‘’ forgotten zones’’, much of the prison population is held in buildings that are originally colonial; they show an abandoned appearance. In dilapidated construction, the spaces are limited with poor ventilation and sanitation. In addition, medical facilities are inadequate and in most case non-existent.
We also point out that a greater part of inmates did not receive formal education before their incarceration.
As in many countries the issue of overcrowding still remains questionable in Ghana prisons. It is even a relevant issue that should be conscientiously dealt with in our prisons. From the Ghana Prison Service annual report the prison population has doubled from 2008 to 2010 and we presently reach an approximate prison population of 18,000 living in facilities designed to accommodate 4,000.
N’sawam Medium Security prison, the most important prison of Ghana built in 1956 to accommodate 717 inmates now has over 4,000 inmates. In the same way; 55 inmates can share a cell meant for 12.
Overcrowding is really a serious health risk for incarcerated persons.
In our detention centers, this fact of matter contributes to a prevalence of serious and communicable diseases such as AIDS, tuberculosis, Itch, cholera, cough, asthma and typhoid fever.
It is also regrettable to notice the frequency of suffocation, assaults between inmates themselves, homosexuality, lesbianism and sodomy in the midst of the incarceration areas.
Besides, bedding and clothing worries for prisoners still persist and they also do not eat according to their expectation. The only provided meals and water are of poor quality. On account of food shortages, they are compelled to rely on their families or outside organizations for additional food and other necessities.
For decades our rulers have never been aware of voting that is one of the social rights of incarcerated persons. Unfortunately prisoners voting are a taboo issue in our country and in many countries of our continent.
II/ ADEQUATE AND GENUINE PRISON REFORMS
In view of all those sad realities in the prisons of our country, we have to recognize that many works remain to be done in the field of prison reforms. Therefore some good and efficient measures must be taken to make credible our rehabilitation struggle on behalf of the prisoners. To fulfill this goal, we must all pay heed and be aware of the living condition of the prisoners regardless their social status.
Prison Reforms efforts must be absolutely based on some relevant Human Rights tools such as:
- The ‘’UN Standard Minimum Rules for the treatment of prisoners
approved 31 July 1957
- The UN Declaration of Human Rights 1948
- The Kampala Declaration on prison Condition in Africa
- International CURE recommendations, March 16 2008, to the
Inter-American Human Rights Commission.
Although the governments have committed themselves to improve prisons’ conditions, many things must be done again in several areas: adequate sanitary conditions, nutritional food, drinking water, hygienic facilities, suitable clothing, adequate medical service and education including skills development.
CONCLUSION
Fighting for the sake of the prisoners is surely a noble work. In the same way, all these recommendations will be more meaningful if existing budget and periodic subsidies are allocated to enhance Rehabilitation and Restoration efforts in our respective countries.
It is a great challenge we should win by all means in our different CURE representations including other concerned Human Rights advocates.
The Mission is very difficult but not impossible
CITIZENS UNITED FOR THE REHABILITATION OF ERRANTS
P.O BOX DS 1666 DANSOMAN- ACCRA
+233 546 973 093 OR +233 274203671
Email: augustin.thecheck@yahoo.fr
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PRETRIAL CHALLENGES
by Maurice Alexander
My comments on pretrial detention are very much akin to all that have been discussed by the panelist that went before me. For the benefit of summary, I will reiterate our common themes regarding the challenges pertaining to Pretrial Detention. These obstacles are most acute in developing countries. I say developing because they do not impact developed countries to the same degree. These challenges are issues of poverty. For example, in the United States and Western Europe, systems have well been established to deal with the issues of allowing poor people to be released on their personal recognizance, and that involving speedy trails. Even when pretrial detention issues become widely known, developed countries address them faster.
Another example is when TB had begun to emerge in many jails and prisons during the late nineties. Within five years or so, the threat of people being released and spreading this decease to the wider community had been eliminated. I believe the same could be said about HIV-AIDS and other commutable deceases. Due to the degree of overall development, these countries are better equipped to resolve a pretrial detention question before it becomes a crisis.
Therefore, our focus is primarily on developing countries. The most common pretrial detention challenges these countries face, particularly in the post colonial countries, are:
- Making pretrial detention practices consistent with international human rights standards
- The waste of public, family and individual resource due to severely faulty pretrial detention systems.
- Loss of confidence in criminal law enforcement
- Questions involving conviction and punishment before trail (due to long-term pretrail detention)
- Public health risk via contagious decease subject to be spread to the community at large
In the last analysis, these challenges are issues of poverty; hence the most poverty stricken countries experience the harshest pretrial detention conditions. Moreover, as we improve pretrial detention
conditions on a global scale, we move to eradicate the scourge of poverty, while enhancing poor peoples’ confidence and perceptions of their governmental systems.
I close my presentation with the offer of working with groups interested in establishing links with my office in Washington, D.C.
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Conference Kick-off
48 Ways Forward and 4 Goals
Charles Sullivan, Founder and Director of International CURE
Each of you have been given a copy of the recent CURE Booklet, “Ways-Forward to Transform Justice and Prison Systems, from primarily retribution to primarily restoration, rehabilitation, and reintegration.” This booklet provides the basis for a CURE platform in coming years.
To guide this transformation, the booklet presents multi-country analyses of 5 key problem-areas, (drawn from CURE assessments of justice and prison systems in 14 African countries and 35 countries in the western hemisphere),
and each problem-area in 3 parts:
- 1.) a reported example of Retribution in each of these 5 problem-areas (examples drawn largely from CURE assessments of 14 African countries),
- 2.) a statement on transformation in each area, and.
- 3.) recommended Ways-Forward in each problem-area (drawn from years of work by CURE and others, and conferences on justice and prisons). These ways-forward are selected to gradually transform justice and prison systems, by strengthening human rights and strengthening processes that restore, rehabilitate, and reintegrate. 48 Ways-Forward are in these five problem areas:
Area 1. Judicial Systems. (6 Ways Forward)
Area 2. Over-incarceration vs. Alternatives. (7 Ways Forward)
Area 3. Abuse. (11 Ways Forward)
Area 4. Health Care. (8 Ways Forward)
Area 5. Rehabilitation & Reentry. (16 Ways Forward)
Typical reported retribution examples are:
-
“Defendants may spend years in detention waiting for trial. The judicial system is hampered by inefficiency, corruption, and lack of resources. Legal advice is rarely provided to the poor.”
-
“Many places of detention hold 2-5 times their design capacity, sometimes forcing occupants to sleep sitting up or turn over on the floor in unison.”
-
“Security forces beat and abused detainees and persons in detention to punish them, extract confessions, or extort payments with near-total impunity.”
-
AIDS, tuberculosis and other diseases are much more frequent in many prisons. “Poor sanitation, inadequate medical facilities, meager food supplies, and lack of potable water resulted in serious outbreaks of dysentery, cholera, and tuberculosis, which were exacerbated by overcrowding.”
-
There is neglect and denial of remedial education and job training that are needed to create a possibility for inmates to live productive lives.
All the above is also online in the CURE website at www.internationalcure.org Within this broad platform, CURE has further proposed a small set of target goals, to be achieved within the next five years.:
By 2015 :
1. Reduce the annual admissions to prisons by 30% – 50%
1a. Increase the use of alternatives to incarceration. Each State should foster and coordinate
local practice of alternatives.
1b. Improve the availability of defendant’s legal counsel.
2. Improve prison-judicial practice.
2a. Reduce pre-trial waits; and set a maximum allowable wait time of one month.
2b. Reduce overcrowding in all prisons; and enforce a limit of 120% of design capacity.
2c. Reduce false convictions.
3. Reduce AIDS and other communicable diseases in prisons by 30-50%
3a Provide programs for inmates on coping with AIDS and other diseases, including disease transmission-education, testing, treatment, and counseling.
3b The Ministry of Health should take the responsibility of health in prison; and prisons should be included in all public health programs.
4. Reduce recidivism rates by 30% – 50%.
4a. Make job training for decent work and rehabilitation-reentry a prime purpose of all correctional facilities.
4b. Reduce prisoner abuse; build citizenship by humane and constructive treatment.
These policies pay for themselves many times over. This improved legal access, wider use of restorative justice, protection against abuse, combating disease, and holistic education, within justice and prison systems, will ultimately promote social inclusion and social integration. These policies then result in increased productivity, less crime, and more personal security for all.
It is ultimately more economical to thus restore, rehabilitate, and reintegrate than to eradicate by retribution. Many societal costs, including costs for police, judicial, jails, prisons, welfare, medical, and other costs of after-effects, are thereby reduced.
All CURE chapters and friends are encouraged to focus on supporting the 48 Ways-Forward and achieving these goals, which serve to favorably transform our justice and prison systems.
Posted in Abuse Prevention, Alternatives, Health & Addiction, Justice Operations, Prison Ops, Rehabilitaion and Reentry | Leave a Comment »
HUMAN RIGHTS ARE PRISONERS’ RIGHTS[1]
Etannibi EO ALEMIKA, PhD *
Introduction
Human rights are inherent entitlements of all human beings. Prisoners are human beings and therefore entitled to human rights. This simple statement will no doubt sound repulsive to many people. To many it amounts to political and religious heresy to say that prisoners have human rights and worse still to say that the state and society are obliged to respect them. Negative attitudes towards the prisoners are widely and relatively uniformly distributed among diverse groups in the population.
Significant proportions of the diverse groups in society oppose the recognition and protection of the rights of prisoners, including the abolitions of death penalty. Why is this so? The explanation lies in the misunderstanding of the factors and processes leading to criminalization and criminality. This misunderstanding leads many people to divide the human population into criminal and non-criminal groups. However, this is a gross misrepresentation of reality.
Who really are the criminals, a segment of which are incarcerated? The reality of life is that all human beings are criminals – at one time or the other involved in actions that violate the criminal law and liable to arrest, conviction and punishment, if such transgressors had been under surveillance, observed and arrested for the violation of law. Human beings are not essentially criminals or non-criminals. They are only differentiated, in terms of the frequency of criminal conduct; the nature, type and severity of crime committed, and differences in ability or capacity or privilege to conceal criminality (due to possession of wealth, power, and status) to evade detection, arrest, trial and conviction when involved in crime. Indeed, in all modern states, certain groups of people, such as top national political actors and foreign diplomats, are granted immunity from criminal surveillance and arrest for criminality.
Who are the prisoners? Simply, some individuals who actually violated the law and some accused of violating the law but innocent, yet wrongly convicted and imprisoned? Some individuals accused but still presumed innocent pending trial and judgement but nonetheless subjected to varied deprivations. People in the prisons do not constitute a homogeneous group. It should be realized that most people involved in behaviours or actions that violate criminal laws are never arrested, tried and imprisoned. And that include most of us here today. I do not in any way trivialize the fact that many people commit very injurious violent crimes that leaves their victims with serious trauma. But many perpetrators of such crimes are not arrested and they live among the population as ‘innocent persons’. Yet individuals who are innocent are convicted to avoidable and unavoidable imperfections of the criminal justice agencies and agents.
Realizing that we all at various or some times engage in conducts which substantively violate the criminal code, we should be less judgmental towards offenders caught by nets of the criminal justice systems, which critics say trap the petty offenders while protecting the big and ruthless criminals in different sectors of society. Instead of being insensitive towards offenders, we need to reflect on the process through which crime and criminal codes are constructed and criminals are produced by both existential conditions and political and economic structures. There is need to understand how criminal laws, crimes and criminals are made in order to adopt constructive rather than destructive policies and programmes in handling offenders, especially those committed to prison custody for punishment.
The Production Criminal Laws, Crimes and Criminals
Crime and criminal laws are made through a process generally referred to as criminalisation. The terms criminality and criminals can only be understood in the light of the concept of crime. What is crime? There is a general consensus among experts that crime is the violation of criminal laws or codes. This further leads us to another question? What are criminal laws or criminal codes and how are they made? Again, the answer is simple. They are rules made by the rulers to prohibit certain behaviours they consider offensive or harmful to their well-being and sometimes to those of the generality of citizens. Criminalization is a product of the following process:
- identification of specific behaviours by the rulers (in and out of formal structures of government) as harmful and therefore should be prohibited;
- enactment of laws prohibiting and punishing the behaviours;
- establishment of law enforcement agencies to enforce the provisions of the laws,
- interpretation and application of the law by relevant prosecution and judicial agencies in respect of the conduct of an individual , and
- labelling of an individual as transgressor of law, that is the label criminal is affixed on individuals, with attendant consequences of punishment, including imprisonment and death penalty.
The criminal laws made by the rulers do not prohibit all harmful or injurious behaviours. Frequently, they exclude social, economic and political actions and behaviours by the rulers that inflict very serious injuries on the citizens and society. Therefore, the content of criminal law is very selective and discriminatory. To a large extent, criminal laws are instruments for the control of the poor and powerless by rich and powerful. The preponderance of the poor and powerless within the criminal justice system in various capacities and with diverse affixed labels like suspects, accused, offenders, convicts and prisoners clearly demonstrate the link between being poor and powerless and being criminalized – that is being labelled criminal, convict and prisoner. Criminalization therefore refers to the making or production of crime and criminals through the criminal law. In the absence of criminal laws and law enforcement agencies, there will be no criminals, though there will always be people who do things that offend or injure their fellow human beings, and are assigned different labels like deviants and sinners but not criminals.
International Norms on the Human Rights of Prisoners
The primary purpose of law enforcement and judicial agencies is to administer criminal justice. Generally, criminal justice refers to ‘doing justice’, that is giving unto criminals what they deserve. Here lies a fundamental connection among criminal justice, human rights, prisoners’ rights and prison reform. How do we determine what the offender deserves? Can the failure of society to guarantee basic necessities of life or access to vital socio-economic opportunities to some individuals constitute defence or mitigating factors? Should privilege, wealth and power constitute aggravating or mitigating factors in apportioning punishment? Should punishment be apportioned solely based on the harm caused by the behaviour of an individual? Should the behaviour of the victims constitute affect the punishment of offenders? Factoring these puzzles into decisions about what the nature and extent of “justice” that are deserved by an offender can be a very daunting decision, ultimately influenced by experience and subjective factors. In order to protect suspects, accused persons and offenders from cruel, unusual and degrading treatment and punishments, several normative guidelines on the treatment of offenders have been developed and adopted and expected to be respected and implemented.
The violation of the human rights of human prisoners through inhuman conditions in prisons and lack of political will to reform or transform prisons into corrective and rehabilitative agencies are borne out of negative perceptions of prisoners and the relative powerlessness of prisoners, professionals and staffs in the prison system. The high prison walls are not only meant to prevent the escape of prisoners. They are also meant to make the inhuman conditions of the prisoners, deprivation of prison staffs and the dehumanising prison environment invisible. The invisibility of the prison conditions shields our consciousness and conscience from the inhuman, degrading and cruel punishments that are meted to fellow citizens in the name of promoting justice and public security through the penal measures of deterrence, retribution and incapacitation. We should not cynically dismiss the observation made by Thrasymachus in Plato’s Republic on the relationship between the characters of laws and rulers in society.
“In every case the laws are made by the ruling party in its own interests; a democracy makes democratic laws; a despot autocratic ones, and so on. By making these laws they define as “just” for their subjects whatever is for their own interests, and they call anyone who breaks them a “wrongdoer” and punish him accordingly”.
Recognizing that prisons can be designed or used as chambers of torture, inhuman, unusual and degrading treatment, several international norms have been developed to protect the rights of prisoners and other persons in detention facilities of the State. The United Nations Organization has adopted or made several instruments (Charters, Conventions, Declarations, etc) for the protection of prisoners’ rights. Among them are the following crucial ones:
- United Nations Declaration of Human Rights (UNDHR): 1948
- International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR):
- Standard Minimum Rule (1955) outlined the minimum custodial conditions under which prisoners may be remanded or sentenced.
- Standard Minimum Rule for the Administration of Juvenile Justice (Beijing Rules): 1985
- Rules for the Protection of Children Deprived of their Liberty (1990)
- Standard Minimum Rule for Non-Custodial Measures (Tokyo Rules): 1990
- Body of Principles for the Protection of All Persons under any Form of Detention or Imprisonment.
- Convention Against Torture
On the Continent of Africa several norms have also been developed at various fora by state and non-state actors. They include:
- African Charter on Human and Peoples Rights was adopted by OAU in 1981 and came into force in 1986, October 21.
- Kampala Declaration on Prison Conditions in Africa (1996)
- Guidelines and Measures for the Prohibition and Prevention of Torture, Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment in Africa. (The Robben Island Guidelines)
- Kadoma Declaration on Community Service Orders in Africa 1997;
- Arusha Declaration on Good Prison Practice 1999
- Ouagadougou Declaration on Accelerating Prison and Penal Reform in Africa (2002)
The contents of the various normative instruments are either similar or complementary. Essentially, they aim at safeguarding the rights of prisoners. They also contain provisions aimed at promoting the reformation, rehabilitation and reintegration of the prisoners into society. To what extent have these norms influence contemporary penal policies and practices? Available evidence indicates that the norms have been observed more in breach, resulting in a global penal crisis.
Global Penal Crisis
There is at present a global penal crisis driven by irrational penal policies. The criminal justice systems in many countries are in crisis, which has manifested in several and different ways in many countries. Three brief examples will suffice. In the United States, the punitive agenda that was set in the early 1980s led to mass incarceration that has resulted in nearly five-fold increase in prison population over three decades. Despite the pursuit of the traditional punishment philosophies of retribution, deterrence and incapacitation, American prisons continue to overflow with inmates and high rates of recidivism. At present the American prisons are reproduction of the urban ghettos. The prison crisis in America was precipitate less by increase in crime rate and more by counterproductive penal policy of zero-crime tolerance, determinate sentencing, mandatory custodial sentencing and longer prison sentences for numerous crimes.
Similarly, though to lesser extent, the United Kingdom is also engulfed in penal crisis with increasing prison overcrowding, huge budget for the prisons and ineffective sentences. The problem in the United Kingdom has been largely precipitated by the incarceration of petty offenders for short-term. According to a recent Report released by the UK National Audit Office, “Over 60,000 adults per year receive custodial sentences of less than 12 months. On any given day they make up around 9 per cent of all prisoners but account for some 65 per cent of all sentenced admissions and releases”[2]. It was estimated that “in 2008-09, the cost of looking after short-sentenced prisoners, not including education and health care, was £286million”. The Report further noted that:
Short-sentenced prisoners are mostly commonly convicted of theft and violence offences. On average, they have 16 previous convictions, which is more than any other group of offenders. They are also more likely to re-offend: around 60 per cent are convicted at least of one offence in the year after release. Based on the previous work by the Home Office, we estimated that, in 2007-08, re-offending by all recent ex-prisoners cost the economy between £9.5 billion and £13 billion and that as much as three quarters of the cost can be attributed to former short-sentenced prisoners: some £7billion to £10 billion a year[3].
The lesson from this UK Report is that harsh penal policy based on retribution; deterrence and incapacitation are very expensive, ineffective and counterproductive.
The third example is Nigeria. The country’s prisons reflect a paradox. Nigeria’s prisons are overcrowded with awaiting trials inmates. This category of inmates constitutes about two-thirds of the inmate population. This preponderance of awaiting trial inmates thwarts the efforts of the Prisons Service to establish and sustain reformative, rehabilitative and re-integrative programmes for the convicted inmates. The high population of awaiting trial inmates in urban prisons in the country is due to flawed and dysfunctional laws, repressive police arrest and detention practices, especially in respect of minor crimes; acute lack of skilled police intelligence and investigation officers; inadequate investigation resources; lack of prosecution resources and inadequate skilled prosecution officers; inadequate magistrates, and inclination towards the detention of suspects pending and during trial by the police, prosecutors, magistrates high court judges in the country. As in the case of USA and UK, the penal crisis in Nigeria is a product of flawed policies associated with harsh punishments.
Retribution to Restoration, Rehabilitation and Reintegration
There are several norms from which humane and efficacious criminal justice policies in general and especially penal policies and practices can be derived. Proposals aimed at transiting from retribution and deterrence to restoration, rehabilitation and reintegration are contained in some of the international norms earlier discussed. What is lacking is the political will to adopt humane and efficacious criminal justice policies.
In concluding this address, permit me to highlight some of the proposals that were developed in the Kampala and Ouagadougou Declarations. The Kampala Declaration noted the following prevalent conditions in Africa prisons: overcrowding; lack of hygiene, insufficient or poor food, difficult access to medical care, a lack of physical activities or education, as well as an inability to maintain family ties. In order to address these problems, it was recommended:
- that the human rights of prisoners should be safeguarded at all times and that non-governmental agencies should have a special role in this respect, that is recognised and supported by the authorities,
- that prisoners should retain all rights which are not expressly taken away by the fact of their detention,
- that prisoners should have living conditions which are compatible with human dignity,
- that conditions in which prisoners are held and the prison regulations should not aggravate the suffering already caused by the loss of liberty,
- that the detrimental effects of imprisonment should be minimised so that prisoners do not lose their self respect and sense of personal responsibility,
- that prisoners should be given the opportunity to maintain and develop links with their families and the outside world, and in particular be allowed access to lawyers and accredited para-legals, doctors and religious visitors,
- that prisoners should be given access to education and skills training in order to make it easier for them to reintegrate into society after their release,
- that special attention should be paid to vulnerable prisoners and that non-governmental organisations should be supported in their work with these prisoners,
- that urgent and concrete measures should be adopted to improve conditions for vulnerable groups in prisons and other places of detention; such as: juveniles, women, mothers and babies, the elderly, terminally ill and very sick, the mentally ill, the disabled, foreign nationals. Procedures that take into account their special needs and adequate treatment during their arrest, trial and detention, must be applied to these groups;
- that all the norms of the United Nations and the African Charter on Human and People’s Rights on the treatment of prisoners should be incorporated into national legislation in order to protect the human rights of prisoners,
- that the Organisation of African Unity and its member states should take steps to ensure that prisoners are detained in the minimum conditions of security necessary for public safety.“
As a step towards the realization of humane prisons in Africa that will reduce the rate of imprisonment and unjustifiable incarceration; the Kampala Declaration recommended:
- that petty offences should be dealt with according to customary practice, provided this meets human rights requirements and that those involved so agree,
- that whenever possible petty offences should be dealt with by mediation and should be resolved between the parties involved without recourse to the criminal justice system,
- that the principle of civil reparation or financial recompense should be applied, taking account of the financial capability of the offender or of his or her parents,
- that the work done by the offender should if possible recompense the victim,
- that community service and other non-custodial measures should if possible be preferred to imprisonment,
- that there should be a study of the feasibility of adapting successful African models of non-custodial measures and applying them in countries where they are not yet being used,
- that the public should be educated about the objectives of these alternatives and how they work,
Very few governments in Africa today are conscious of their duty under the Declaration and are taking or have taken steps to comply. African prisons remain degrading and dehumanizing chambers or human warehouses.
In 2002, The Ouagadougou Declaration and Plan of Action on Accelerating Prisons and Penal Reforms in Africa were adopted. The Declaration and Plan of Action focused on diversion of offenders; reducing prison population, providing adequate resources; reintegration of offenders, application of rule of law and respect for human rights; developing, and adoption and implementation of best prison and penal-correctional practices. The Declaration and Plan identified strategies for preventing people from coming into the prison, including:
- Use of alternatives to penal prosecution such as diversion in cases of minor offences with particular attention to young offenders and people with mental health or addiction problems.
- Recognition of restorative justice approaches to restore harmony within the community as opposed to punishment by the formal justice system – including wider use of family group conferencing, victim offender mediation and sentencing circles.
- Use of traditional justice as a way of dealing with crime in line with constitutional guarantees and human rights standards.
- Improving referral mechanisms between the formal (State) justice system and the informal (non State) justice system.
- Decriminalisation of some offences such as being a rogue and vagabond, loitering, prostitution, failure to pay debts and disobedience to parents.
With specific reference to the reduction of unsentenced prisoners in the prisons, the following strategies were recommended:
- Co-operation between the police, the prison services and the courts to ensure trials are speedily processed and reduce the delays of remand detention through: regular meetings of caseload management committees including all criminal justice agents at the district, regional and national levels; making of costs orders against lawyers for unnecessary adjournments; targeting cases of vulnerable groups.
- Detention of persons awaiting trial only as a last resort and for the shortest time possible, including: increased use of cautioning; improved access to bail through widening police powers of bail and involving community representatives in the bail process; restricting the time in police custody to 48 hours; setting time limits for people on remand in prison.
Nearly a decade after the Declaration and Plan of Action were adopted, these strategies are yet to be implemented by most African governments. As a result of the failure to implement the foregoing norms and strategies, African prisons systems, indeed the criminal justice systems remain ineffective, repressive and degrading state coercive agencies.
In December 2005, the Federal Government of Nigeria constituted a Presidential Committee on Prison Reform and Rehabilitation, which I had the privilege of anchoring. The Committee submitted its Report to the President in August 2006 and a Draft White Paper was promptly prepared by a Committee Chaired by a Minister. However, nearly five years later, the draft White Paper has not been considered for approval and implementation by the government, in spite of appeals and reminders. This shows that prison reform, protection of the rights of prisoners as well as the restoration, reformation, rehabilitation and reintegration of prisoners are rarely priorities, if at all concerns, of governments, especially in Africa, where human rights protection mechanisms are weak.
Conclusion: What next?
In concluding this address, I wish to state my view. The wheel for transforming the crisis-ridden penal systems that prioritizes imposition of harsh punishment aimed at achieving deterrence, retribution and social defence through incarceration or incapacitation into no less efficacious and but undoubtedly more humane penal correctional systems driven by the goals of restoration, reformation, rehabilitation and reintegration has been invented. However, the wheel has not been put to work by many governments across the globe. Consequently, their criminal justice systems are in crisis.
The way out of the crisis is not to reinvent the wheel. What we need is not further multiplication of norms but rather to develop strategies and capacities for mobilising the governments to establish the necessary framework for turning the wheel and to provide or yield a space for partnership between state criminal justice agencies and civil society organisations to do this effectively. Networks of civil society organisations engaging in advocacy with relevant international, continental and regional organisations and national governments seem to me a very probable way of advancing the implementation of the laudable norms of criminal justice administration and humane governance of prisons and correctional systems that have been developed. Let us join hands to turn and make the wheel of justice work for the realization of human rights as prisoners’ rights.
B.Sc. Sociology (Ibadan), Ph.D. Criminology (Penn.); Professor of Criminology and Sociology of Law, Department of Sociology, Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Jos, Jos, Nigeria [E-Mail: alemikae@yahoo.com]
[1]Keynote Address Presented at The 5th International CURE (Citizens United for the Rehabilitation of Errants) World Conference on Human Rights,, Criminal Justice and Prison Reforms on the theme From Retribution to Restoration, Rehabilitation and Reintegration held at Shehu Musa Yar’adua Centre, Abuja, February 21-24, 2011.
[2] National Audit Office 2010 Managing offenders on short custodial sentences. London: The Stationery Office, p4
[3]Ibid.
Posted in Alternatives, Justice Operations, Rehabilitaion and Reentry, Uncategorized | 2 Comments »
The Role of Restorative Justice
in Prison
and Criminal Justice Reforms
By Don John O. Omale (PhD)
djomale@yahoo.co.uk
Dr. Don John O. Omale was a British Chevening Scholar of Criminology, a Beneficiary of the Rotary Foundation International Group Study Exchange Programme to California, District 5230 USA (2002); and an Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) Delegate to the Model United Nations Congress in New York, USA in April 2003. He has published and presented academic papers on restorative justice at international conferences in the UK, Africa, USA and Canada respectively. He is a member of the British society of criminology, London; member of the International Institute of Restorative Practices, Pennsylvania, USA, and International Adviser to Restorative Justice Initiatives (RJI), Leicester, UK. He holds BSc Psychology (University of Nigeria, Nsukka); MSc Criminology (University of Leicester, UK) and PhD Restorative Justice & Victimology at the Centre for Community and Criminal Justice, De-Montfort University Leicester, England, UK. He is presently the HOD, Criminology and Penology at Salem University, Lokoja, Kogi State, Nigeria.
Introduction
The statutory responsibilities of the Nigeria Prison Service as a member of the Criminal Justice System include ‘taking into lawful custody all those referred to be so kept by courts of competent jurisdiction; identify the causes of their anti-social behaviour; and formulate mechanisms to correct them for eventual reintegration into society as law abiding citizens on discharge’.
However, criminologists and people working on prisoner rehabilitation have discovered from research that for prison to serves as a crime reduction mechanism, it is necessary to work with prisoners on victim empathy, accountability for offending; as well as their reintegration process.
The aim of this argument is that, after a solemn public judicial adjudication of offenders in court, we as individuals and society; pronounce offenders enemies of the people, and sometimes consign them to arbitrary periods of institutional confinement on the basis of criminal laws written many years ago. There they languish until time has ground out so many weary months and years. Then on discharge they are dumped back on society, regardless of whether any change has taken place in them for the better and with every assurance that changes have taken place in them for the worse. Once more they enter the unequal tussle with society. They are proscribed for employment by most concerns, stigmatised by their own communities yet, they are expected to turn away from crime, invent a new way to make a living and to survive without any further help from society (see Menninger 1985).
This paper argues that the kind of changes the criminal justice system expects from offenders and ex-offenders could only occur when leaders in correctional services are empowered to become champions of correctional models in their countries in partnership with communities. One of such model this author would argue is the ‘Restorative Justice Paradigm’.
Restorative Justice according to the UN’s acceptable definition is ‘a problem-solving approach to crime which involves the parties themselves and the community generally, in an active relationship with statutory agencies’ (Marshall, 1999:5). The interventions of restorative justice in the context of the criminal justice are relatively new models of dealing with crime and offending behaviour. However, from the early part of the 1990s, many national governments and non-governmental/community based organisations in Europe, Australia, Canada, New Zealand and America have been using these approaches with increasing frequency in an attempt to finding constructive solutions to interpersonal conflict, crime victimisation, and offending behaviour generally.
Realistically, most restorative justice programmes take place outside prison. However, in recent times there have been efforts to explore how restorative justice might fit into the context of a prison, and
further, whether it would be possible to conceive of a restorative prison regime-one based fully on restorative principles and values. According to Daniel W. Van Ness of the Centre for Justice and Reconciliation, Prison Fellowship International; there are at least four ways these efforts could get started.
One is when groups of prisoners decide that they want to find ways to make amends and to meet with their victims (this could happen when offenders realise the gravity and impact of their offence on the victim perhaps, through cognitive resonance).
A second is when leaders in correctional services in their countries become champions of restorative justice (two good examples can be found in Canada and the US state of Minnesota) where correction officers in probation and parole, having tried restorative ideas successfully in their communities, decided to see whether the programmes could be useful inside prison.
A third is when people working on prisoner rehabilitation (like you and me) discover that it is necessary to deal with prisoners’ responsibilities to those they have harmed as part of their reintegration process.
A fourth is when victims of serious crime decide that they would like to meet with their offender (perhaps for healing and harmony restoration). This could be years after the crime took place and the offender might have gone through the criminal justice system and been sent to prison.
However, to some people these forms of initiative might sound iconoclastic (attacks to established criminal justice ideas and principles). But the questions this author amongst others, has put and will continue to put to those who challenge the restorative justice paradigm are: ‘what exactly is justice?, how do we treat crimes as ‘serious’ without engaging in harsh forms of punishment or ‘hyper-criminalization’ of offenders?, how do we ‘do justice’ in an unequal society? And how do we balance the rights of the victims of crime and offenders in the administration of justice in an unequal society? (also see Hampton, 1998; Daly, 2001; Omale, 2005). Should we continue to be ‘tough on crime’ without ‘getting tougher on the causes of crime?’
In the view of this author, the answers to above crucial questions lie in the acronym JUSTICE which the author would argue represents: Jurisprudence, Unity; Social responsibility, Trust, Integrity, Care and Equity. All of these elements of justice are more likely to be seen and harnessed in the restorative justice paradigm than in the convectional criminal justice system. This author would argue that these elements have, and still exist in the African understanding of ‘justice’ as enshrined in the popular African philosophy of ubuntu: Iam because you are; You are because Iam. Or as late Brenda Fassie puts it in her musicals: umuntu ngumuntu ngabantu -a person is a person through persons (see Omale, 2005:17). The impact this conception of ‘justice’ could have on both victim and offender’s understanding of justice could be transformational because, if one’s humanity is tied up with the humanity of all others then, what makes others worse off also brings harm to oneself.
Potential Benefits of Restorative Justice to Prisons and the Criminal Justice System
Flowing from the above discourse, potential benefits of restorative justice to prisons and the criminal justice could include some of the following objectives identified by Dan Van Ness:
To help prisoners develop awareness of and empathy for victims.
a. An example is the ‘Focus on Victims programme’ in Hamburg, Germany, which takes place during the prisoners’ first three months in the institution. The projects helps prisoners think generally about victimization, then consider people they know who have been victims, reflect on their own experience of being victims, and then look in more detail at the consequences and aftermath of victimization. It is concluded with an introduction to victim offender mediation.
b. The Victim Offender Reconciliation Group, initiated by prisoners at the California Medical Facility. This programme operates weekly meetings to which they invite various victims groups to make presentations and participate in dialogue. For example, representatives of the Bay Area Women Against Rape victim support organization have met with them on a number of occasions to discuss the trauma of rape and its aftermath, and to lead discussions about the attitudes of men who rape. This has led to prisoners doing service projects or making products for sale so that proceeds can go to the victim rights groups that have participated in the programme.
c. Still other programmes organise conversations between prisoners and surrogate victims – people who have been victims of crimes, but not those committed by the particular offenders they are meeting with. The purpose of these programmes is to make the victim experience real by allowing prisoners to develop a relationship with victims, to hear their stories, and to reflect together on how crime affects the lives of victims. An interesting side-benefit of these programmes is that not only do prisoner attitudes change, so do those of the victims, as they come to know the prisoners. An example is the Sycamore Tree Project, run by Prison Fellowship International in a number of countries.
To either require or make it possible for prisoners to make amends to their victims.
a. In some of these programmes, amends are made to the actual victim. For instance, Belgium gives prisoners access to a fund that allows them to earn money by doing community work. This money is applied to restitution to their victim.
b. In others the emphasis is on the community as an indirect victim. For instance, the International Centre for Prison Studies (Kings College, London) in the UK initiated a “restorative prison” project in three prisons. One of the four key objectives was to create opportunities for prisoners to perform community service projects in and outside of prisons, such as reclaiming public parkland.
To facilitates mediation between prisoners and their victims, their families and their communities.
a. The State of Texas USA for instance, developed a programme at the request of victims and facilitates meetings between crime victims or survivors with their offenders. Most of the offenders are serving very long sentences; some are on death row. The programme does not affect the prisoners’ sentence length; however, the victims’ opinions are very influential in parole hearings and some victims have decided not to contest parole after their meetings. Typically, victim requests the meeting, although this is not always the case. There is, however, a lengthy preparation process designed to ensure that the victims and prisoners are ready for such a meeting and that it will not result in secondary victimization.
b. Many prisoners have alienated their families because of their involvement in crime, the embarrassment and harms they have caused their families, and in some cases because of the crimes they have committed against family members. Consequently, it may be necessary to facilitate interaction between prisoners and their family members in order to discuss how to re-establish a meaningful relationship together. An example of this would be a project of Prison Fellowship Cambodia that is part of their non-residential aftercare programme for prisoners. Volunteers with Prison Fellowship initiate conversations with family members about the prisoners’ expected release, and where there is interest will facilitate meetings between family members and the prisoner.
c. Communities can be fearful and angry at the prospect of a prisoner returning. Restorative justice programmes have emerged to address this particular problem. In Zimbabwe, the Prison Fellowship acts as a facilitator in conversations between the head man of the prisoner’s village and the prisoner; related to the prisoner’s return to the village. Another example is a remarkable Canadian programme, now used in England as well, called ‘Circles of Support and Accountability’. These programmes assist in the reintegration of serious sexual offenders, usually men who are paedophiles, into communities. There is understandable apprehension on the part of both the communities and the released offenders. The Circles work with the offender, social services, local law enforcement and community members to organize a treatment programme and to negotiate conditions related to community safety and security.
To strengthen ties between prisons and the communities in which they are situated.
This is an institutional objective that acknowledged that isolation of prisoners from the community while within prison is exacerbated by the lack of productive ties between prisons and the communities in which they are found. The strategies to be used to overcome this could include public awareness activities, recruitment of volunteers to help in the prison, and negotiation of community service projects that would be valued by members of the community. This will facilitates Prison-Community Relations.
To create a culture within prison in which conflict is resolved peacefully.
There are multiple layers to this objective.
a. The first is to teach prisoners how to deal with conflict in a peaceful way. One example of this is the Alternatives to Violence Workshops developed by Quakers at the request of prisoners in Attica, New York. This project helps prisoners to recognise when potentially violent situations are likely to arise, learn communication skills to alleviate the potential for violence, and learn to value others, which it is believed will reduce their resort to violence.
b. A second kind of programme helps prisoners who come into conflict with other prisoners find peaceful ways to resolve it. An Ohio programme called ‘Resolution’ trains prisoners to serve as mediators. These prisoner-mediators help prisoners in conflict find their own solutions. A closer example is the peace table in Bellevista Prison in Medellin, where imprisoned gang leaders meet to resolve disputes inside and outside the prison.
c. A third category could addresses workplace conflict between correctional staff members, including senior management. Programmes like this have been used in Philadelphia City Prisons and the state of Ohio. The programme has not only helped staff address their own conflicts, it has also improved their ability to deal with conflict with prisoners.
d. A fourth category of programme could deals with prisoner discipline and grievance procedures. This is a sensitive area, because it addresses the issue of power in prisons. The staff and management of the prison have power, and prisoners have far less. Any attempt to introduce conflict resolution in prisons to deal with prisoner complaints against staff members, or disciplinary proceedings initiated by staff against prisoners, must tackle this power imbalance carefully.
To create an environment in which the prisoner’s entire self may be transformed.
Dan Van Ness, Cullen and others have called this a ‘Virtuous Prison’, one in which restorative justice and rehabilitation could be combined in an effort, “to foster ‘virtue’ in inmates, which is usually defined as ‘moral goodness’ or ‘moral excellence….
Prisons should be considered moral institutions and inmates reformation a moral enterprise. Inmates should be seen as having the obligation to become virtuous people and to manifest moral goodness. This statement announces that there are standards of right and wrong and that offenders must conform to them inside and outside of prisons. The notion of a virtuous prison, however, also suggests that the correctional regime should be organised to fulfil the reciprocal obligation of providing offenders with the means to become virtuous.”
In addition to all of the above, the role of restorative justice in prisons and criminal justice; particularly in a system where access to justice is not guaranteed could also include the following as identified by Omale (2005:62-63);
- To help decongest the courts, police cells and Awaiting Trial Persons in prisons; and enhances quick dispensation of justice in nations where access to justice and formal judicial forums is difficult and expensive, and unbiased treatment of disputants is by no means guaranteed.
- The less crowded are prisons, courts and police cells of a country, the more confidence the citizenry and the international community would have on the criminal justice administration of such country.
- Another importance of restorative justice to criminal justice is what the author calls the “victim-autological” benefit of restorative justice. By this the author mean that since government cannot provide policing for every crime victims and potential victims, an answer to the why me? Question which, victims of crime ask in restorative justice conferencing enables the victims of crime to self-protect and safeguard themselves of re-victimisation and or from potential offenders.
- More young offenders, minor offences and first offenders could be diverted from imprisonment thereby preventing the circle of ‘school to prison’, and breeding of future harden criminals through learned differential association in prisons.
- The Crime-econometrics and Cost Benefit Analysis (CBA) of restorative justice compared to imprisonment of offenders is decisively in favour of the former.
- Finally, restorative justice reduces the level of stigmatisation of offenders. This is imperative because, focus on crime prevention means criminal opportunities must be made harder. The more freely and easily offenders and ex-offenders are stigmatised and rejected in our communities, the more difficult it becomes for any prison reformation programme and strategy to demonstrates its effectiveness because, even the best, most comprehensive programmes to help offenders transform their lives will inevitably be compromised if we do not simultaneously address the powerful social forces of stigmatisation that are destroying the communities to which the offenders must return.
References
Cullen FT (2000) ‘Assessing Correctional Rehabilitation: Policy Practice and Prospects’ in J Horney (Ed) Criminal Justice 2000, Volume 3: Changes in Decision Making and Discretion in the Criminal Justice System. Washington: US Department of Justice.
Daly, K (2001) ‘Sexual Assault and Restorative Justice’ Paper presented at Restorative Justice and Family Violence Conference, Australian National University, Canberra
Hampton, J (1998) ‘Punishment, Feminism, and political Identity: A case study in the expressive meaning of the law’. Canadian Journal of Law and Jurisprudence 11 (1) 23-45.
Marshall, T, F (1999) Restorative Justice: An Overview, London: Home Office Research Development and Statistics Directorate.
Menninger K (1985) ‘Therapy, not punishment’ in J G Murphy (Ed), Punishment and rehabilitation, Belmont: Wadsworth
Omale, D.J.O (2005) Understanding Restorative Justice: A Handbook for Criminal Justice Stakeholders, Enugu, Nigeria: Trinity Biz Publisher.
Van Ness, D.W (Undated) ‘The Practice of Restorative Justice in Prison Reform’ Training Session 204.
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