Community Service Act will help reform offenders without prison contamination — CDD-Ghana

Programs Manager at the Ghana Centre for Democratic Development (CDD-Ghana), Dr Michael Augustus Akagbor, has welcomed the passage of the Community Service Act, describing it as an important intervention in addressing overcrowding and rehabilitation challenges in Ghana’s prisons.

He said the country’s prisons were originally established as reformative institutions where offenders could be rehabilitated and reintegrated into society.

However, Dr Akagbor observed that overcrowding and the mixing of petty offenders with hardened criminals have turned some prisons into spaces where offenders could acquire more serious criminal behaviours.

Speaking on Accra-based TV3’s Agenda programme on Tuesday, September 1, he said the purpose of imprisonment should go beyond punishment to include the reformation of offenders.

“The prison has become a reformative space, but we are also aware of the fact that in recent times our prisons have become spaces of contamination. You send people to prison for really petty offences, and then they come out, like Jonathan said, hardened criminals," he noted.

Dr Akagbor said sending people who commit minor offences to prison can expose them to hardened criminals and potentially undermine efforts to reform them.

He said the Community Service Act provides an opportunity to address the challenge by allowing people who commit less serious offences to serve their sentences within their communities instead of being sent to prison.

Dr Akagbor further noted that the initiative could help ease pressure on the country's overcrowded prisons and also support the rehabilitation of offenders without requiring the state to commit significant additional resources.

He said Ghana’s prisons are technically designed to accommodate about 13,000 inmates but are currently operating at about 37% above capacity.