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The Ghana Prisons records show that as of July 2009, the Nsawam Medium Security Prisons had exceeded its maximum capacity of 851 inmates by over 200 per cent to 2,951 inmates.

The Akuse Prison with a maximum capacity of 60 inmates had over 309; Kumasi Central Prison with a maximum capacity of 416 had over 1678 inmates.

This is the trend all over the country and interestingly, more than half of these inmates in most of the facilities are remand prisoners. For instance, out of Nsawam's 2951 inmates more than 1,734 were remand prisoners.

Remand prisoners are criminal defendants who are held in prison custody pending the final adjudication of their cases. The courts normally commit them to prison custody on warrants that are renewed periodically (after every three months in Ghana) in order for their continuous imprisonment to be lawful.

In Ghana, they are usually “dumped” in prison because those prosecuting them have asked the courts to do so while investigations “continue.” The courts are mostly more than willing to grant the desires of the prosecutors, some of who subsequently go on vacation and everybody forgets about the unfortunate prisoners for several years.

Many of them are held for petty crimes and could not have been sentenced for more than two years if convicted. Yet, some of them have been held for nearly 20 years.

The remand prisoner problem has become so pronounced in Ghana recently to engage the attention of government, the judiciary, human rights activists, United Nations Agencies, non-governmental organisations in the rule of law sector, and the media.

For the last two years the remand prisoner problem and possible strategies to resolve it have been discussed at various forums, including the media.

I was privileged to have attended one of such forums in Akosombo recently, where Her Ladyship the Chief Justice, the Attorney-General, the Minister for Interior, the IGP, the Prisons Boss, the acting Commissioner of CHRAJ, and many others of the criminal justice system had gathered for two days to brainstorm on how to save the situation. The dialogue was under the auspices of the Attorney-General's Office and sponsored by the UNDP.

It was clear from the conference and subsequent pronouncements of the stakeholders that the leadership of institutions of the criminal justice system is seriously concerned about the problem.

It has also been clear from certain actions by the Judiciary and the A-G's office that the determination to reduce the intensity of the problem is not lacking.

However, it appears that the main focus was misdirected because we have all accepted certain arrangements in the criminal justice system as matters we can do little or nothing about and we are not willing to make the right suggestions to the government and judiciary and tackle the issue headlong.

I talked about this at a dialogue in Akosombo and I believe much attention was not paid to it.

The main problem is easy to spot. It is not the practice in the A-G's Office or problems associated with police prosecutions and attitude of police investigators. The problem is the non-availability of defense counsel for indigent criminal defendants.

The Police and State Prosecutors do not represent the interests of defendants. Their job is to work against the interest of these defendants and punish them. Defendants' interests are pursued by lawyers who represent them.

Accordingly, unless these unfortunate citizens who are constantly “dumped” in the prisons for the least offence are given adequate and effective legal representation, the remand prisoner problem shall not go away.

There may be several makeshift measures to resolve the problem. But while they are discussed, new remand prisoners are added daily to the stock. It is defense lawyers that would argue aggressively in court that a particular defendant deserves to be granted bail.

It is defence counsel that will make a motion to the court that the prosecution has kept a defendant in prison for too long without cause, and thereby force the State to enter nolle prosequi for the defendant.

Unfortunately, almost all the remand prisoners in Ghana are indigents who could not afford to hire their own lawyers.

Consequently, for most of them, the only court proceeding they have attended, which was the day they were committed to prison, they did not have anyone representing their interests and they were unfairly taken through a one-sided proceeding that led to their remand in prison custody. Continued    Source: DAILY GRAPHIC - Daily Graphic

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