Restorative Justice: An Ethical and Practical Solution to Ghana's Criminal Justice System (I)

Over the past years, there's been much hue and cry about Ghana's Criminal Justice System, or, more specifically, the justice delivery system.

Much of this discussion and debate has focused predominantly on sentences given to offenders by judges and on prison reforms. People with no criminal history, who commit minor offences, for instance, have been sent to the hottest places in prison, while others are said to be living in conditions — in prison — not even fit for animals.

We often hear refrains such as “our prisons are overcrowded,” “there's been an increase in crime wave,” among many other such concerns. In fact, just about a week or so after he was released from prison, the beleaguered Member of Parliament for Keta, Dan Abodakpi appealed to parliament, the government, and all other institutions of state whose functions connect them to and with the prisons to embark on some practical, institutional reforms in our prisons, which concerns also have moral, economic, and ethical ramifications.

There is no denying the fact that our prisons are in a very bad condition, for which reason massive reforms need to be undertaken to make them habitable for human beings. That said, however, prison reforms, a term we have so much harped on, rehashed, and fallen in love with, is only one aspect —in fact, just a shred— of the criminal justice delivery system. Just embarking on prison reform alone will not take care of judges imprisoning people for stealing people's watches, neither will it ameliorate the ever-increasing crime wave in the country.

When policy makers discuss the idea of prison reforms they harp on the idea of a massive building boom, which boom is to embark on the expansion of prison facilities and the prison's capacity to accommodate more people who have been charged with and convicted for committing crimes or who will commit crimes in future.

Of course, that is not to mention the provision of other facilities —bedding, toilets, water, foods, etc— that make life liveable for prisoners. Research has, however, shown that putting up many structures — irrespective of how huge and safe they are — does not necessarily lead to a decrease in crime rates. If that were the case the United States, the country with the highest incarceration rate, will be on top of the fight against crime.

In 2000, Germany, for instance, allocated the equivalent of $1.25 billion for the construction of new prisons. The goal of its impressive expansion plan was to increase prison capacity in the eastern German states by 50 percent and in the western states by 25 percent (Austin and Irwin 2001).

Furthermore, in general, the prison population in European nations grew to about 20 percent during the 1990s, but, in more than half of these nations, the prison population grew by 40 per cent. In South America, the population grew by between 60 and 80 per cent over the decade. It grew by 65 percent in the USA over the decade and 33 per cent in South Africa between 1990 and 1999. Even Japan, a nation that historically has had a relatively small crime rate, saw its prison population grow by 10 per cent in the 1990's (Austin and Irwin 2001).

Why were all these structures put in place and yet there was so much growth in incarceration rates? It should be easy to believe that an increase in structures for prisoners will be able to accommodate the many criminals who commit various offences, and, therefore, those who are sent to prisons. That is not the case, however. What this means is that there is no one-to-one correlation between putting up many buildings to accommodate criminals and crime reduction. In fact, simply using incarceration rates to determine crime rates in any country is a myth. Ghana, like many other countries, especially the United States, has experienced massive imprisonment.

Traditionally, it has been understood that when you imprison all criminals, society will be safe, crimes will reduce, and innocent people left in society will have their peace of mind to undertake their daily activities without any disturbances, fear, or troubles.

This view also believes that there is a group of people out there who are innately criminal, so their absence will bring about some safety. Thus, what the justice delivery system, supported by some public opinion, has done is to incarcerate offenders in dungeons or towers to separate them from human contact to reduce further crime while they are incarcerated. Unfortunately, the more the “innately' criminal ones are sent to prisons, the more crime rates increase. What we lose sight of is that everyone is a potential criminal.

Why should there be an increase in crime when all (we think) we have to do is to just imprison convicted offenders and all other people who will commit crimes in future? Why is it that in the face of stringent laws, more prisons, and other policy-level developments, crime rates have not decreased? It must be understood that the continuous increase in crime wave is not driven by underlying changes in criminal behavior, but by a stagnation in policy-level developments, which developments hold on to the traditional idea that the only way to punish people is to put them behind bars even when they commit minor offences.

At any rate why hasn't the thought of going to prison scared people to stop committing crimes? Shouldn't everyone be running helter-skelter when the word 'prison' is mentioned? When a system is overly-used it loses its striking effect, while making its victims immune to its punitive function. According to Lynch and Sabol (2004), if and when incarceration becomes so prevalent that it is no longer an aberration, people will not sanction incarcerated members and incarceration will lose its sitgma. In fact, when incarceration becomes prevalent in a community, it loses its mystery and, therefore, some of its deterring power. The tougher our laws have become, the tougher criminals have become!

Lynch and Sabol (2004) continue that “once experienced, prison is transformed from an awful mystery to a real life ordeal that has been suffered and survived. Incarceration socializes inmates into the prison subculture, and upon their return, their stronger deviant orientation relative to their neighbour's increases normative heterogeneity in the community.”

In a research that was conducted asking prison inmates whether they preferred to serve prison terms or have other alternative forms of punishment, prison was preferred over any duration of an alternative (Flory et al 2006). Prisons are where gangs are formed, where a new form of socialization begins, and where the most unheard of criminal behaviours are cultivated. Society suffers the more, because, after all, a very high percentage of the people who go to prison eventually get out and go to the same environment that shaped their world view before they committed the crimes.

At the moment what our criminal justice system is doing is to focus on more buildings to house criminals (some of whom have not even thought of ever committing crimes), food, and other facilities for prisoners. While these processes are marginal developments that also border on the safety and security of offenders and society, much of this attempt becomes fruitless in the end.

While statistics are hard to come by — as we don't even have a coherent body of qualitative and quantitative research on this area, —the economic costs of housing millions of offenders are staggering, more so for a developing country that thrives on loans. The costs run into billions of dollars, and the social costs to offenders, to their families, and to the society are incalculable.

Read Part II on tomorrow.

Credit: Godwin J.Y. Agboka [Email:[email protected]]
The author is a PhD candidate in International Technical Communication and an MA student in Criminal Justice.