FAITH & REHABILITATION

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;

1. 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.

2.  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.
3. 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.
4. 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.
5. 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.
6. 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.
7. 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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CHURCHES AND MOSQUES

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.

---

[1] Vatican II. Gaudium et Spes, 90.

[2] Thomas Hobbes. Leviathan (1651). (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1967), Part 1, Chapter XIII, p. 97.

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ETHIOPIAN JUSTICE

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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VIOLENT & MENTALLY ILL

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.

 http://www.texastribune.org/texas-dept-criminal-justice/texas-department-of-criminaljustice/mentally-ill-end-up-in-texas-prisons/

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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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WOMEN IN PRISON

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 48^th 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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PRISON REFORMS

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

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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WAYS FORWARD

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.

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HUMAN RIGHTS

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:

1. identification of specific behaviours by the rulers (in and out of formal structures of government) as harmful and therefore should be prohibited;
2. enactment of laws prohibiting and punishing the behaviours;
3. establishment of law enforcement agencies to enforce the provisions of the laws,
4. interpretation and application of the law by relevant prosecution and judicial agencies in respect of the conduct of an individual , and
5. 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:

1. United Nations Declaration of Human Rights (UNDHR): 1948
2. International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR):
3. Standard Minimum Rule (1955) outlined the minimum custodial conditions under which prisoners may be remanded or sentenced.
4. Standard Minimum Rule for the Administration of Juvenile Justice (Beijing Rules): 1985
5. Rules for the Protection of Children Deprived of their Liberty (1990)
6. Standard Minimum Rule for Non-Custodial Measures (Tokyo Rules): 1990
7. Body of Principles for the Protection of All Persons under any Form of Detention or Imprisonment.
8. 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:

1. African Charter on Human and Peoples Rights was adopted by OAU in 1981 and came into force in 1986, October 21.
2. Kampala Declaration on Prison Conditions in Africa (1996)
3. Guidelines and Measures for the Prohibition and Prevention of Torture, Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment in Africa. (The Robben Island Guidelines)
4. Kadoma Declaration on Community Service Orders in Africa 1997; 
5. Arusha Declaration on Good Prison Practice 1999
6. 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:

1. 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,
2. that prisoners should retain all rights which are not expressly taken away by the fact of their detention,
3. that prisoners should have living conditions which are compatible with human dignity,
4. that conditions in which prisoners are held and the prison regulations should not aggravate the suffering already caused by the loss of liberty,
5. that the detrimental effects of imprisonment should be minimised so that prisoners do not lose their self respect and sense of personal responsibility,
6. 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,
7. 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,
8. that special attention should be paid to vulnerable prisoners and that non-governmental organisations should be supported in their work with these prisoners,
9. 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;
10. 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,
11. 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: 

1. that petty offences should be dealt with according to customary practice, provided this meets human rights requirements and that those involved so agree,
2. 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,
3. 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,
4. that the work done by the offender should if possible recompense the victim,
5. that community service and other non-custodial measures should if possible be preferred to imprisonment,
6. 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,
7. 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:

1. 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.

2. 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.
3. Use of traditional justice as a way of dealing with crime in line with constitutional guarantees and human rights standards.
4. Improving referral mechanisms between the formal (State) justice system and the informal (non State) justice system.
5. 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:

1. 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.
2. 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 5^th 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.

 

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RESTORATIVE JUSTICE-2

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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POLICE LOCKUPS

 

Standards for Monitoring Human Rights of People
 in Police Lockups:

Potential Roles of Community-Based Organizations

Charles Hounmenou, Ph.D., Visiting Research Specialist

Center for Social Policy and Research, Jane Addams College of Social Work, University of Illinois at Chicago

Despite the fact that every year a large number of persons are detained in police cells, little is known about who is detained in them, for what reasons, the circumstances they are held in and the conditions they experience. There are no statistics published on a regular basis. Nor are police cells subject to regular external scrutiny or annual reporting. There are no official visitors of police cells as there are in the prison system. Mostly invisible to the public eye, it is generally only when a death occurs in police custody and through coronial findings that police cells come to the public’s attention (Office of Police Integrity, 2006, p. 16).i

Introduction

In opposition to prisons, conditions and treatment of detainees in police lockups do not appear to be of great interest to the research community. Civilian review agencies have been involved in the oversight of the police misconduct, with their interventions focusing mainly on citizen complaints. Most reports of visits and inspections of police lockups, and citizen complaints relate to the violation of the basic human rights of persons in police custody. The purpose of this paper is to review the literature on human rights standards in police lockups, and explore the role community-based organizations can play in monitoring detainees’ human rights in police lockups. The paper focuses on three points: first, it reviews some major cases of violation of the basic human rights of persons in police lockups in the U.S.A., second, it summarizes standards for monitoring human rights of persons in police lockups in the U.S.A. as well as other countries, and finally, the potential role community-based organizations could play in the monitoring of human rights of persons in police lockups is discussed.

Brutality in Police Custody

A police lockup is neither a jail nor a prison. It is a short-term holding facility within a police station that is used to provide secure, temporary holding cells for suspects waiting for interrogation, arrest processing, transfer to jail or for other administrative procedures. Despite the establishment of standards and policies about how to humanely treat persons in police custody, police officers view fair treatment of detainees to be inappropriate and undeserved. Police officers sometimes perceive a police lockup as a place for retribution instead of a pre-trial, safe space for suspects. Some police officers do not appear to worry about consequences of abusing persons in lockups probably because of the lack of effective oversight mechanisms of their misconducts. Research on inspections and visits to police lockups in various countries has shown all sorts of excesses, ill-treatment and abuses including deaths in policy holding cells. Substandard detention conditions of persons in police lockups described in literature include the following: overcrowding and long stays for persons in police cells; torture and beating of detainees; inadequacy of holding cells due to their location and size; insufficient attention to custodial standards; inadequacy or absence of provision of basic services such as health care; detainees in police cells found to be at risk of self harm; lack of access to basic amenities in police cells; inadequacy of hygiene facilities; lack of separated cells for juveniles or other vulnerable detainees; and inadequacy or lack of internal monitoring system to ensure the safety of persons in police lockups.

It is often only after news about atrocious conditions in police cells, or about high profile cases of abuse or death of persons in police custody, has reached the media that public outrage is raised. While some police brutality occurs during arrests, most of these events happen when suspects are already in police custody. According to Amnesty International (1996), there had been many disturbing cases of police abuse cases in which suspects died in police custody in the New York Police Department (NYPD). A 2004 NYPD report found that 55 people had died in police custody between January 1990 and the end of April 1999, a number found to be surprisingly conservative. There was the famous case of August 1997 when a Haitian immigrant man named Abner Louima was erroneously taken into police custody in Brooklyn for a crime he did not commit, and underwent torture.

Chicago is another city whose police department has been identified by Amnesty International for frequent police misconducts, especially recurrent practices of torture of suspects, and deaths in police lockups. Between January 1990 and September 1998, 177 Blacks and 80 whites died in police custody or jail in Cook County (Gordon, 2007). Some detainees committed suicide in the lockups of Chicago city and suburban police stations. In 1990, officers from the Area 2 police station in Chicago systematically tortured over 200 African American suspects between 1972 and 1984 (Amnesty International, 1990). In June 2005, an overall 135 racially-motivated cases of torture and abuse of African American men and women at the hands of former Chicago Police Commander Jon Burge and officers under his command in Area 2 police district were documented. Abuses include: suspects were beaten and kicked, had a plastic bag placed over their head causing near suffocation, threatened with mock execution by having a gun placed in their mouth, and subjected to electric shock torture.

There had existed an unwritten policy to systematically torture suspects in police custody within the City of Chicago’s Police Department. In 1999, Dr. Robert Kirschner, an international expert on torture, equated tortures of suspects in Area 2 Chicago police district torture to the pattern and practice found in other countries where official torture was practiced by the military and by police. The Chicago Police Department’s policy of locking up and interrogating for days individuals who are not charged or suspected of any criminal wrongdoing brought other lawsuits against the department, including two in 2003 and 2005. For Human Rights Watch (1998), most incidents of police abuse and brutality in the United States are encouraged by flawed internal investigations, rare criminal prosecutions of police officers by local and federal prosecutors, little reason for brutal officers to fear punishment, and most importantly a lack of external oversight mechanisms to monitor the detention conditions of persons in police lockups.

Monitoring Detention Conditions in Police Lockups

The monitoring of detention conditions in police lockups is important because first, persons in police custody are mostly pre-charge suspects. Second, having temporarily lost their freedom, detainees have limited recourse to any remedy or assistance. Third, as human beings, detainees’ basic human rights have to be upheld and protected. Fourth, police view themselves less in the role of custodians than in that of law enforcers. Considering that many police appear reluctant to perform their custodian role, one could understand difficulties or scruples they have to humanely treat suspects in their custody, and consequently the potential abuses detainees can experience in a police lockup. The question would be to know who should monitor police lockups to see if their human rights are respected.

The United Nations Body of Principles for the Protection of All Persons Under Any Form of Detention or Imprisonment of 1988 states that “Places of detention shall be visited regularly by qualified and experienced persons appointed by and responsible to a competent authority distinct from the authority directly in charge of the administration of the place of detention or imprisonment.” Yet, in contrast to prison systems, there is a lack of inspection programs of police lockups in many countries. Most countries’ laws uphold certain rights available to detainees in a police lockup. Police stations develop and implement written standards and procedures for the operation of a lockup facility. Lockup standards are specifications or benchmarks for lockup operations and facilities.

Though police lockup standards may vary from one state to another, from one police department to another, they are often grounded on international human rights standards stipulated in various documents including the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948, the United Nations Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners of 1955, the United Nations Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment of 1984, and the United Nations Body of Principles for the Protection of All Persons Under Any Form of Detention or Imprisonment of 1988. Three important convergent points are upheld in the policy and standards of most police worldwide regarding an adequate treatment of detainees: a) police departments shall operate a safe and sanitary lockup facility in compliance with state and local codes and regulations; b) they shall care for detainees, being attentive to their security and medical needs; and c) they shall provide special care for juveniles, and persons with special needs.

Synopsis of Standards for Monitoring Human rights in Police Lockups

A literature review of standards ⁱⁱⁱ set out in the United Nations conventions and protocols regarding treatment of detainees, the Prison Rape Elimination Act of 2003 (PREA), and procedures of treatment of detainees in police lockups in various countries (e.g., the U.S.A., the United Kingdom, the European Union, Australia, and some African countries) shows that the following eight areas of standards could be considered for monitoring human rights of people in police lockups: 1) detainee safety; 2) detainee accommodation; 3) detainee medical/mental health; 4) food; 5) detainee psychological well-being; 6) detainee discipline and restraint; 7) treatment of detainees with specific needs; and 8 )  awareness of lockup facility staff about detainees’ human rights.

• Detainee safety. a) Police shall take steps to ensure detainees’ safety and wellbeing; b) officers shall be held strictly responsible for the safe custody of the detainees under their care and this responsibility is theirs at all times.
• Detainee accommodation. a) All accommodation provided for the use of detainees shall meet all requirements of health; b) the physical conditions of the holding cells and the lockup facility shall provide for the humane treatment of detainees; and c) detainees are provided with an appropriate standard of accommodation that ensures the respect of their human rights, and balances individual rights with the rights of others.
• Detainee medical/mental health. a) Detainees shall be held in a clean environment that enables them to maintain self respect and provides for their physical and mental health, and well-being.
• Food. Detainees shall be provided with quality food that takes into account individual religious or dietary needs, is of good nutritional value, and is well prepared and presented.
• Detainee psychological well-being. a) All persons under any form of detention or imprisonment shall be treated in a humane manner and with respect for the inherent dignity of the human person; b) persons in detention shall be subject to treatment appropriate to their unconvicted status; c) they shall not be discriminated against and are provided equal protection under the law; and d) they must be protected from torture and cruel, inhuman treatment. 
• Detainee discipline and restraint. a) Detainees are protected from degrading treatment or punishment; b) the degree of force used should be the minimum required to control or manage detainees’ behavior; c) force should be used as a means of control, and not as a method of punishment;
• Treatment of detainees with specific needs. Particular efforts shall be made to protect the rights of children and young people in a police lockup; and c) detainees with special needs must be provided with appropriate services and assistance.
• Awareness of police lockup facility staff about detainees’ rights. Police officers responsible for a lockup facility must be trained about its operations, its policies, and the human rights of detainees.

 Upholding human rights standards for detainees in police lockups is one thing, but having these standards applied is another big issue that calls for an independent monitoring system.

Potential Monitoring Role of Community-Based Organizations

Advocates for an independent oversight of the police argue that oversight of police misconduct should be led either entirely or partially by an external, civilian review body to which important power is given over the conduct of investigations involving citizen complaints against the police. Yet, most studies show low performance and limited effectiveness of citizen (or civilian) review agencies of police misconduct. Livingston, in her (2008) article titled The Unfulfilled promise of citizen review,^iv decried a major problem with civilian oversight systems: their retrospective focus on investigation of complaints to address issues of police misconduct. After-fact reviews of complaints could hardly impact or prevent police misconduct. The retrospective review of complaints may not be as effective as a preventive, before-the-fact strategy of monitoring and analysis of the police’s patterns of misbehavior that aim to identify, prevent or limit issues of misconduct before their occurrence. Important as civilian oversight agencies may be, they are reactive to situations of police misconduct, because they focus primarily on receiving and responding to complaints from citizens. It is necessary for civilian oversight systems to move beyond their reactive examination of police misconduct, and take on a proactive, preventive responsibility by identifying and resolving systemic problems or aspects of law enforcement that cause or perpetuate misconduct.

An area in which a citizen oversight body may have a crucial role to play would be the monitoring of police lockups. Here, monitoring implies periodic inspections of police lockups, interviews of detainees and detention staff, and reports based on the lockup policies and procedures as well as human rights standards. Thus, instead of expecting people who have been abused in police lockups to come forward, in case they survive or do not commit suicide or die under torture, to complain about their bad treatment in custody, civilian oversight systems should be proactive by investigating whether the police lockup standards are followed, or whether detainees’ basic human rights are respected and upheld. It should be possible for an officially appointed oversight agency to require and conduct regular inspections of police lockups. Thus, monitoring police lockup conditions could help prevent or lessen bad treatment detainees experience inside police holding cells.

There is a need to bring in community-level organizations that have substantial experience in advocating for the respect of human rights in prisons, jails and police lockups. First, it will be difficult to politically influence such groups. Second, community-level advocacy organizations appear to be closer to citizens than the appointed civilian review agencies whose authority and resources mainly depend on the political leadership that establishes them. Third, resources may not be a major challenge for community-based groups to be involved in monitoring conditions in police lockups. Community-based groups may also get substantial financial support for their activities from the community because citizens, community partners, and other stakeholders may view them as closer to them, and more independent to oversee and report about issues of bad treatment of persons in police cells.

The John Howard Association (JHA) is a good example of such a citizen-based organization. Court-mandated to monitor jail conditions in Cook County (Illinois), the JHA maintains a program of prison and jail visits, bringing over a thousand volunteers into jails, prisons, and juvenile facilities throughout the Illinois State. For Young (2006)v, the role of the citizen observer in monitoring jails and prisons is very important for four reasons. First, it would be impossible to find enough resources to compensate thousands of people who volunteer for the observation and conversation with inmates. Second, each citizen who visits a detention center or jail becomes a valued public witness of what very few citizens see. Third, these volunteers could help assure that detention centers follow acceptable, contemporary standards. Finally, they could also be a voice among the general public to depict their awareness of life in detention.

While some community-level organizations or associations are recognized and sometimes legally allowed to conduct visiting or, to some extent, monitoring of jails and prisons in the U.S, there are almost no such groups to monitor police lockups, and make recommendations for improving conditions of detention. Thus, there is a need of citizen-based agencies or associations to be involved in visiting police lockups at a level similar to the one reached by the JHA in monitoring jail conditions in Illinois. A community-based organization can play an important role in addressing the issue of lack of monitoring of police lockups. Visits and reports made by an independent, community-based organization about conditions in police lockups could help officially appointed civilian agencies to have a better understanding of the background of a great part of citizen complaints. A grassroots organization could rely on the availability of volunteers to conducts lockup visits. It will be costly to have enough staff in a civilian oversight agency to conduct regular and extensive visits of police lockups. Thus, volunteers have a central role to play in a monitoring of police lockups. Political pressure may not affect a community-based, nongovernmental organization in monitoring police lockups as such an organization will probably rely on private resources coming from fund-raising to conduct its work. The organization’s visits to police lockups, and if possible, interviews with persons in detention, could be a deterrent, and enhance visibility and improvement of conditions of detainees. The paramount role a community-level organization will have to play is to oversee whether established police lockup standards are upheld and followed, and consequently whether the human rights of detainees are respected.

Two ways for such a group to be effective in a role of monitoring police lockups could be: first, to submit the findings, and making recommendations to not only the police chief, but also to the civilian oversight structure officially appointed; second, to disseminate periodical reports on its findings regarding detention conditions. Yet, the police will probably be very reluctant to cooperate with, and let a community-based organization monitor its lockups. For a community-based organization that aims to take on the responsibility of visiting police lockups for the sake of respect of international human rights standards, there are some basic characteristics it should have. First, this organization should have a successful track record of involvement in advocacy work for detainees’ rights. Second, its leadership must be known for its professional integrity. Third, the organization should be able to raise adequate managerial funds for its projects of monitoring police lockups. Fourth, support from the political leadership of the jurisdiction where it plans to implement programs of monitoring police lockups will be crucial. Beyond that, a support from the judiciary power will give it lots of credibility and authority to the work to achieve. Among the community-level organizations that may be able to play a substantial role in monitoring police lockups in the U.S.A. are the American Civil Liberty Union (ACLU), and the Chicago-based Citizens Alert.

 i Victoria Office of Police Integrity (2006, July). Conditions for persons in custody. Report of Ombudsman Victoria and Office of Police integrity. Australia: Melbourne.http://www.opi.vic.gov.au/index.php?i=22

ii See United Nations Organizations (1988). Body of principles for the protection of all persons under any form of detention or imprisonment, principle 29. http://www.un.org/documents/ga/res/35/a35r178e.pdf

iii See Hounmenou, C. (2010). Standards for Monitoring Human Rights of People in Police Lockups. http://www.uic.edu/jaddams/college/research_public_service/files/StandardsforMonitoringHumanRightsforPeople_2.pdf

iv Livingston, D. (2004). The Unfulfilled promise of citizen review. Ohio State Journal of Criminal Law, (1), 653.

v Young, M. (2006, February). The Promise and challenge of citizen oversight and visits to prison. John Howard Association of Illinois. Paper Submitted to the Commission on Safety and Abuse in America’s Prisons Hearings on Oversight, Accountability and Other Issues. California: Los Angeles. http://www.prisoncommission.org/statements/young_malcom.pdf

Citizens Alert, Chicago’s major police accountability organization, has been working for humane, effective law enforcement, and advocating for persons victims of police brutality and misconduct for over 44 years. This organization aims to monitor police conduct and policies to assure greater accountability to the public, and to build coalitions to involve other organizations in efforts to making the Chicago Police accountable for its conducts. A grassroots organization such as Citizens Alert appears to have the necessary background and assets to fill the gap in the work of the civilian oversight bodies limited in their retrospective review of citizen complaints about police misconduct.

It will be unprecedented to have a community-based organization be involved in such a sensitive area of monitoring conditions of detention in police lockups. Some people might think that bringing in a community-based organization for visiting and reporting about police lockups would be a threat to the appointed civilian review agencies. Others might think that such an organization would be a redundant, external oversight body as regards reviewing police misconduct. Yet, having an oversight organization emerging from the community may have many positive impacts on the welfare of persons in police custody. So, regular visits of lockups by lots of volunteers would probably put some pressure on police officers responsible for the facility management to respect detainees’ constitutional and human rights. Having a community-based organization visit and report about conditions of detention in police facilities would be an important initiative to uphold detainees’ human rights in police lockups.

However, the three major obstacles to such a commendable project will be the police itself, the political power, and an established civilian review agency. The political authority has a central role in having both the police and the civilian review agency accept the establishment of a citizen group to observe, report on the appropriate treatment of suspects, and make recommendations for the uphold of lockup standards and respect of human rights in police custody. By allowing a community-based organization in the role of monitoring police lockups, the police will be viewed in the community as transparent and accessible. The civilian review agency will probably receive less citizen complaints about conditions in police custody. Most importantly, it will learn about trends of officers’ behavior in a police lockup that lead to some patterns of complaints.

Conclusion

The existence of standards for monitoring human rights of persons in police lockups is not enough to prevent police abuse of persons in custody. With the demanding aspect of such work, bringing in community-based organizations will be of great importance. Volunteer organizations appear more independent to conduct objective visits and reports about conditions in police lockups. Their capacity of recruiting people for visits and observations of police lockups cannot be matched by any official structure. Their independence from public resources and from political authority is a great asset that can make them a relevant partner of both the police and the civilian review agencies in the ultimate and common responsibility of increasing the community trust in the police’s treatment of people in custody.

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MINISTRY & REFORM

 THE KSM PRISON MINISTRY: OUR EXPERIENCE & PROPOSALS FOR REFORM

by Bro. John A. Jideonwo of the LEKKI Sub-Council of the Order of the Knights of St. Mulumba, Nigeria

Good morning Mr. Chairman, Fellow Panelists and Distinguished Ladies and Gentlemen. It is indeed a privilege for me to be present at this international conference to present to you what we at the Lekki Sub-council of the Knights of St. Mulumba have been able to do differently and the difference we have thereby been able to make in a very short time of prison activism.

Let me start by introducing the Order of the Knights of St. Mulumba (KSM) more properly. The Order of the Knights of St. Mulumba (KSM) is a 57-year old national order of catholic knights founded upon the principles of Catholic Action and modeled after the Sacred Order of Catholic Knighthood. It is a member of the International Alliance of Catholic Knights (IACK) as well as the International Council of Catholic Men (UNUM OMNES). The Lagos Metropolitan Council of KSM has, over the years, focused its Charity efforts on the prison system and is currently engaged in the construction of a Chapel at St. Augustine’s Catholic Church at the Kirikiri Medium Security Prison in Lagos. On its own part, the Lekki Sub-ordinate Council of KSM fashioned itself a Prison Ministry which is primarily focused on the release of prisoners and expediting pre-trial justice. This presentation chronicles our experience in this Prison Ministry and our recommendations for reform.

PART I: From Whence Comes KSM?

The KSM involvement in Prison Ministry is founded on the following Christian principles and injunctions which themselves constitute the basis for Catholic action:

• Christ’s own Declaration as contained in Luke 4 v. 18: “The spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to preach the good news to the poor, He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind and to set at liberty those who are oppressed..”
• Also, speaking of the Last Judgment in Matthew 25 v 31-40, Christ listed visit to prison as one of the examples of the precept by which we shall be judged (v. 36)
• In following with the foregoing, the Catholic Church lists Visiting Prisoners as one of the seven Corporal Works of Mercy to which we are called as true followers of Christ
• As Knights, we see the duty imposed on us by an active Prison Ministry as the logical extension of the principles of “The Culture of Life’ as enunciated by Pope John Paul II, enjoining all Catholics not only to fight for Pro-Life (Anti-Abortion) causes but to ensure the defence of that life from its creation at the moment of conception till its natural termination at the point of death.

PART II: THE KSM LEKKI SUB-COUNCIL PRISON MINISTRY AS A MODEL:

The KSM Lekki Sub-council Prison Ministry started like many other prison ministry activities and consisted mainly of Quarterly Visits to the Ikoyi Prison in Lagos during which food, clothing, medicaments, books and other essential items are given to the prisoners and the Knights and Ladies of St. Mulumba attend Mass with the inmates. These visits however led to the discovery of various horrors and injustices that were embedded in the prison system that needed to be addressed more meaningfully. These included:

•  Many innocent people (about 75% of Awaiting Trial Detainees) are languishing in prison for years, awaiting a trial that may not come.
• A large number of the suspects are held for minor offences arising from state laws for which they could not afford to pay the instant assessment of fines by mobile courts
• The plight of women and children in the prison system and the various reports of abuse, especially of pregnant women

These observations led KSM Lekki Sub-council to decide to scale up its prison charity project into a full Prison Ministry.

The KSM Lekki Sub-council Prison Ministry Model: This model is based on the following components which can be achieved by any NGO or faith-based organization that seeks to make a difference:

–          Recognition of the need to accelerate the processing of cases and to facilitate the release of pre-trial detainees and people held for minor offences

–          Recruitment of lawyers and volunteers who, with the co-operation of the Prison authorities, can review the files of detainees and recommend ways to achieve release in deserving cases. In this regard, we wish to make special mention of the work of A.G. Giwa-Amu Chambers and also Awa Awa & Co and Panuka Chambers who were the initial teams of lawyers that KSM Lekki Sub-council contacted to do the legal review of the cases. We are proud and happy to report that each of these teams has begun to pursue many of the cases on pro-bono basis. The lesson is that, once the lawyers have been sensitized, it is difficult to walk away from this noble assignment.

–          Another important component of this model is the readiness to develop strategies for approaching the courts, payment of small fines, effecting release and efforts to facilitate re-entry

–          Special mention must be made of the issue of high-profile cases (murder and armed robbery) for which people are detained for long periods and either there is no complainant or victim or dead body as evidence; the fact is that 80% of these cases are classified in this category because the offences are not bail-able. 

–          Report on actual achievements: 10 months of the Prison Ministry and only SIX MONTHS of activism, 351 detainees and prisoners released.

–          This is a model whose methodology can be copied whenever a group of lawyers and concerned citizens can be sensitized as to the situation of horror and injustice that is prevailing in prisons all over the world. You just need a few good men who are willing to spend their time and treasure to bring succor to their less fortunate brothers and neighbours.

PART III: SUGGESTED SOLUTIONS AND REFORMS

These recommendations are being offered in the firm belief that, notwithstanding the horrendous situation which the foregoing account presents, the entire situation can be salvaged and is totally reversible if there is sufficient will to reform the laws in order to reform the prison system. The primary focus of efforts should be to ensure that only those deserving of incarceration actually get to the gates of a prison; the real work has to be done at the level of the police station. Efforts to reform the justice administration and policing philosophy can offer some “low hanging fruits” in seeking to reform the prison system

   There is need for a comprehensive review of the code of laws to repeal all laws that have vestiges of the colonial system of governance that was aimed at conquering, dominating, intimidating and exploiting the indigenous citizens of the host colony as a way of containment. Such elements of the criminal law as “wandering with intent to commit felony’ and the power to “Stop and Search” often invoked by the police have no place in a civilized Nigeria. It is the existence of such laws that encourages all sorts of abuses by the Police in arresting and detaining people.

The Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria specifies a maximum police detention of 48 hours and this should be strictly enforced. It should not be possible for any person, no matter his office or position, to “keep” another human being in detention for more than this period without the approval of a court of competent jurisdiction.

• Similarly, all laws that tend to punish offenders of those usually administrative guidelines such as street trading, jay-walking, illegal parking, sanitation offences etc. by imprisonment should be repealed and other non-judicial ways should be found to deal with the problem. These laws unnecessarily criminalize the offenders (especially first-timers) for activities that should not reasonably be regarded as “criminal” in a poverty-stricken country. The sad issue about this observation is that many states now make significant revenue from these “stupid” laws and are quite happy to them since they do not bear the burden of the cost of imprisonment
• There is need for a comprehensive review of the role of the Police in the dispensation of justice. What we have is a carry-over from the colonial philosophy of custody and containment and under which the police was at once the arrestor. investigator, prosecutor and jailor! There is need for a review of the policing philosophy that proceeds from arrest to detention and then uncertain remand without indictment. There is need to amend judges practice codes to ensure that indictment must come before remand.
• Efforts must be made to resolve the following Constitutional lacunae in order to ensure more equitable and transparent administration of the law and justice in Nigeria:
  • The legal system of the country consists of State and Federal laws whereas the Prison system is on the Exclusive Federal Legislative list. We therefore have a federal prison system without a corresponding state prison system. States can therefore make laws without thinking about the cost-effectiveness of imprisonment as a form of punishment. Since most of these “stupid laws” are state laws, the resolution of this problem is to force the States to build and manage their own prisons. This will reduce overcrowding in the prison system and free up funds for rehabilitative work among detainees and even prison officials. Alternatively, the states should be directly debited for state-law offenders sent to the federal prisons> This should discourage them from making “stupid” laws that unduly criminalize their own citizens.
  • The Attorney-General is supposed to be the Chief Law Officer at the State level but has no control over or any relationship with the Commissioner of Police (the Chief Law Enforcement Officer) who reports directly to the Inspector-General of Police at the centre. Nor is the pattern of Police-Prison relations under his purview. There is need for better harmonization of the activities of law enforcement agencies to ensure that those responsible for the administration of justice can ensure that only deserving people are incarcerated.

 5. The average pre-trial waiting time in Nigeria is reported to be 3 years and 7 months whereas most of the offences in the statute books carry prison terms of less than 2 years.  The need for a comprehensive reform of the Pre-Trial Justice System in Nigeria thus cries to high heavens and must be pursued on a war-footing at both the national and state levels. Some of the suggestions that need to be implemented include the following:

• Establishment of time-limits and “return dates” within which any suspect on remand must either be indicted or released. Lagos state has taken the lead in specifying the time limits at 60 days but does not insist on indictment or immediate release. Efforts should be made on a national basis to reduce the maximum initial remand period to 30 DAYS. The time-limit must be enforced and should not be arbitrarily renewed.
• There is need to hold the Magistrates responsible for enforcing the return dates specified in the REMAND ORDER as specified above and any request for extension should be subjected to judicial review by a higher court.
• Prison authorities should be empowered to refuse to hold, keep or otherwise detain any person without prior court order. This would stop a lot of malpractices and abuse of authority by personnel of the Military and State Security Services.
• In an effort to ensure that only those deserving to go to jail actually get there, there is need to step up efforts to eliminate unlawful arrests and arbitrary detention at the level of the Police Station.
• The present system by which the Police can remand before investigating is problematic particularly when the police lack the capacity to investigate. This is what leads to incidents of extortion, torture and extra-judicial killings. There is need for the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA) to take closer interest in these matters and encourage lawyers to regularly visit the Police Stations and prisons to offer legal advice and representation on a pro-bono basis. The Rights Enforcement and Public Law Centre (REPLACE) and the Legal Aid Council of Nigeria (LACON) have both jointly instituted the Police Duty Solicitors Scheme (PDSS) which has yielded some results in Imo, Ondo Kaduna and Sokoto states and is being implemented in Delta, Edo and Kebbi states. The NBA needs to take this project over and see it implemented at the national level.
• The Administration of Justice Act, 1991 provides for the establishment of Administration of Justice Commission(s) at the Federal and State level with principal responsibility specified as “to ensure that criminal matters are speedily dealt with” and the “effective performance of the functions of all organs charged with the administration of justice” in Nigeria. There is no reason why this aspect of the law has not been implemented and it is important that the National Judicial Council, the Chief Justice of Nigeria, the State Chief Judges, the Attorneys-General at Federal and State levels should all be sensitized to this gaping gap in the implementation of the law that has become a veritable source of the injustices that we witness every day.

 6.   The worst part of the problem is that people are benefiting from the entire malady that is     the Nigerian justice administration, law enforcement and prison system. To the extent that the system fails to prosecute embezzlers of public funds on time because of the possibility of interminable delays, it degenerates into a system of economic sabotage and promotes a subterfuge of the nation’s economic future. It also sends the wrong signals down the line that only the poor and powerless people go to jail which lends credence to the culture of impunity that is now commonplace in Nigeria. Many of the solutions proposed here will not yield fruits unless and until all Nigerians are held to be equal before the law and nobody can violate the rights of the other without consequence. Fundamental human rights are so fundamental that they are so clearly spelled out in the UN Charter, The African Charter on Human and People’s Rights and all other similar declarations. There is no room for Nigeria to exempt itself from these hallmarks of civilization.

CONCLUSION: I would like to conclude this presentation by reminding you that what we have tried to chronicle here is the effort of “a few good men” who felt sufficiently sensitized to the plight of their fellow men and decided to take action. Every society has a critical mass of such few good men and so, what we have done at Lekki Sub-council of KSM can be easily duplicated elsewhere especially in Africa. We therefore recommend this model to all good men wherever they exist and assure them that the effort is most rewarding both emotionally and spiritually.

I thank you all for listening.

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PRISON OVERSIGHT

The Dilemma of Prison Oversight

by Elizabeth Alexander

As we all know, running decent and humane prisons is horribly hard to do. In many respects, it is one of the most difficult tasks that government can perform because there is something inherently contradictory about designing a system that is supposed to punish people by depriving them of their freedom while nonetheless recognizing their human rights.

Further, at least when the staff in charge do not actively reinforce norms of humane treatment, it is disturbingly easy for a pervasive climate of abuse to flourish within a prison.

In the academic literature, the standard illustration of this is the Stanford experiment, in which in 1971 a prominent American psychologist set up a mock prison. The experimenters randomly assigned perfectly ordinary American college students, screened for psychological health, to play prisoners or guards. They then took a number of steps with the intent to reproduce the degrading effects of prison, such as having the guards strip search the prisoners and put them in gowns rather than standard male clothing. The guards were given no rules for how to run the prison, but the attempts to recreate the degrading effects of prison life had the effect of removing moral inhibitions to psychological abuse of the prisoners. In this atmosphere, the newly minted guards engaged in such unbounded psychological abuse of the prisoners, with the tacit support of the experimenters, that several prisoners experienced mental breakdowns and the experiment had to be stopped on the sixth day.

 As has often been pointed out, Abu Ghraib is a real life version of the Stanford experiment, in which authorities’ signals that abuse of targeted detainees would be tolerated with the aim of producing military intelligence generated rampant and  shocking abuse, with the additional difference that the Abu Ghraib abuses did not, like the Stanford experiment, end after six days. The lesson is inescapable that avoiding abuse in prison requires active vigilance, careful training, and meaningful oversight.

 Another factor that makes avoiding abuse so difficult is that those who are sent to prison are likely to have characteristics that can make it easier for staff not to see their humanity. Criminals are not generally popular and the evidence from all around the globe is that the people who tend to get labeled as criminals and thrown into prison are those who belong to whatever the locally disfavored ethnic or religious group is.

Nor is prison reform the most obvious cause for the media,  concerned citizens, or NGOs to take on, because prisons are after all closed institutions and it is almost always difficult for outsiders to get reliable information about conditions inside. Thus, prisoners as a group are not viewed as very valuable or believable when they do complain by the outside community.

 The fact that meaningful prison oversight is so intrinsically difficult has led to a great deal of discussion about what sort of structures work to accomplish such oversight effectively. I first began to think about this structural issue in 1999 when I attended a Council of Europe Directorate on Human Rights Conference in Strasbourg, France that was held in connection with the 15th Anniversary of the UN Adoption of the Convention Against Torture. At the Conference speakers representing various European countries described their roles in attempting to implement their country’s commitment to ensure decent and humane conditions in their country’s prisons. These speakers described a number of quite different monitoring mechanisms, from ombudsmen completely independent of the government of the country to the heads of governmental programs located within the country’s correctional agency. The Conference encouraged free dialogue among these various representatives, and the comments of the various overseers during the dialogue were often much more revealing than their official presentations.

What became apparent at the Conference was that there were problems with attempting to locate prison oversight either inside or outside of the formal governmental structure, but that the problems were mirror images. For the prison overseers who were inside the formal prison structure of their country, the weakness was the degree of their commitment to prison reform. While many of those overseers were no doubt good people who sincerely believed in decent prison conditions, there seemed to be clear limits to their vision of prison conditions imposed by their commitment to their role within the government.

Indeed, one or two of these national representatives seemed to view their own primary function, at least in the context of the Conference, to be to defend the reputation of their country’s prison system.

 Those overseers who were outsiders – who functioned as ombudsmen or in some similar role – generally had a markedly different outlook. They did not see their role at the Conference as defending the reputation of their country’s prison system but rather believably described their role as attempting to ensure that the guarantees of the Covenant against Torture were a living reality in their nation’s prisons. For most of these participants, I did not doubt their full-hearted commitment to decent and humane prison conditions, but I was struck by their repetitive tales of their adventures in confronting the prison bureaucracy in unsuccessful attempts to get reforms implemented.

 I concluded, as I listened to the participants at the conference, that the problem of locating mechanisms of oversight within the governmental structure is that the person appointed by the bureaucracy is likely to lack a meaningful commitment to meaningful change. In contrast, when the mechanism for oversight is located outside the formal governmental structure, it will predictably turn out that, even if the person appointed is fully committed to the goals of the Covenant Against Torture, that person also lacks the authority to force changes in prison conditions when it matters.

In short, overseers within the government typically lack the will to drive meaningful prison reform, while entities like ombudsmen who function outside the government structure lack the power to do so. This is a structural problem in designing effective oversight measures for prisons, because governments are unlikely to cede power to entities that might actually interfere with their own authority in managing prisons.

My next thought was that this is a pretty trite insight. But then I realized that there were reasons for my slowness in gaining this understanding of the problem, because the United States for a very brief period managed to escape in part from the dilemma of oversight mechanisms. For the period between the late 1960’s and the mid-1990’s, the United States, to a greater extent than any other country, attempted to accomplish serious prison reform through the judicial system, and that attempt resulted in both enormous victories and ultimately in enormous failures.

Let me sketch out the barest history of judicial reform of prison conditions in the United States. Prison reform through the courts was one of many spin-offs from the civil rights revolution of the 1960’s. Nor only did the civil rights revolution lead to a recognition that prison conditions had to be subject to constitutional guarantees, but large numbers of people active in the civil rights revolution had direct experience with our nation’s prisons and jails courtesy of arrests for non-violent resistance to segregation and discrimination. Indeed, the trio of important Supreme Court victories for prisoners in the 1960’s involved the intersection of race and the courts.

 One of these cases widened prisoner access to the courts, another condemned racial segregation in prisons and jails, and a third protected the religious rights of Muslim prisoners – which in the American context at the time meant Black  prisoners who were suspected of radical political ideologies.

 In the 1970’s, the prison reform movement achieved systemic victories in the American South that in state after state abolished plantation prisons that had functioned as a partial replacement for slavery after the Civil War. While the prison reform movement was somewhat less successful in achieving systemic change in the northern and western states, throughout the nation federal judges took on the work of ensuring minimally decent conditions of confinement in prisons and jails. This period in the American prison reform movement remains one of the outstanding examples of serious prison reform throughout the world.

 For approximately 1968 to 1981 particularly the lower courts in large measure did have both the will and the power to make extraordinarily far-reaching prison reform work, in spite of all the obstacles to that undertaking.

And what made it possible? The judicial system, at least in the United States, to a large extent potentially combines the power of the government itself with a will that is independent of the particular administration in power, so that the judiciary can pursue a policy for prison reform that is institutionally independent of the particular regime in power and indeed markedly independent of the expressed preferences of the electorate itself while the judiciary still enjoys the enforcement power of the state itself to effect change.

 But this example does not mean that judicial reform unsupported by the executive and legislative branches of the government is a stable solution to the problem of prison reform, as is illustrated by the fate of the judicial prison reform movement in the United States. The judicial reform movement had broad objectives regarding political and social equality, particularly racial equality, and the very success of judicial reform led to a serious backlash.

One of the forms that this backlash took was conservative calls for a war on crime that in some forms was just under the surface a call to lock up black men. Between 1970 and 2005 the number of persons confined in American prisons went up by 700% and the percentage of African-Americans among those prisoners went up even as the total number of prisoners sky rocketed, with the result that the United States now incarcerates almost a total of the world’s prisoners – over 2.3 million prisoners.

The forces of reform through the courts confronted the forces of backlash as changes in the justices making up the U.S. Supreme Court changed with new appointments. In 1981, just as the population explosions was getting into high gear, the Court decided Rhodes v. Chapman, and in that case the Supreme Court made it very difficult to get the federal courts to intervene to control prison overcrowding. If the Court had approved the lower court’s order limiting prison overcrowding, that ruling would have eventually made the huge prison population expansion of the 1980’s and 1990’s impossible. The United States, even before the financial crisis that started in 2008, simply could not have afforded to keep over two million men, women and children locked up. By the mid 1990’s, even though the will of the judiciary to require decent conditions was already waning, the U.S. Congress pushed the process along by enacting a law, the Prison Litigation Reform Act, that made it much more difficult for federal courts to continue to oversee prison conditions.

Whether the judicial system will continue to exercise any meaningful oversight over American prison conditions is at issue in a case that the United States Supreme Court will decide in June of this year. For years, California has embarked on imprisoning vast numbers of people for long periods. At one point, the number of prisoners held by the state exceeded 200,000, and California simply cannot afford to imprison that many people. As a result, overcrowding within the prisons reached desperate levels and many prisoners died from a lack of medical care. Lower court judges found that the only solution to the problem would be to reduce the population to a level that California could safely feed, house, and care for, and now the United States Supreme Court must decide whether to limit judicial oversight of prisons even more by reversing the lower court or whether to announce that there are still teeth in the requirement that prison conditions comply with the constitutional guarantee against cruel and unusual punishment.

 If the Supreme Court does require a reduction of the California prison population, it would be a departure from the current Supreme Court’s typical approach to prison conditions. Ordinarily, the Supreme Court Justices do not challenge the legal principle that prison conditions are subject to constitutional limits, but instead the Court imposes arbitrary procedural requirements, such as proof that a particular governmental official acted with ill will, that result in the prisoners losing regardless of how bad the prison conditions are, so prison law in the United States is again at a crossroads this year.

 So what is the message from all this? Whether there are other types of oversight that can do even better and more reliable job than judicial oversight is an open question, but we should not give up on judicial oversight as a method of prison reform. In the United States, in recent years prisoner rights advocates have often despaired that the federal courts could continue to be a source of serious oversight of prison conditions and most of the energy in the discussion about oversight methods has focused on the possibility of using other methods, such as ombudsmen and internal mechanisms such as inspector generals. While the history of prison reform in the United States shows that independent judiciary is absolutely no guarantee of meaningful oversight of prison conditions, an independent judiciary has intrinsic structural advantages that are not shared by most other mechanisms for prison oversight.

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