AG advocates introduction of non-custodial sentencing

Monday, September 22, 2008 (Page 53)

THE Attorney-General and Minister of Justice, Mr Joe Ghartey, has advocated the introduction of non-custodial sentencing in the country’s criminal justice system.
According to him, such a move would ease congestion in prisons across the country.
Mr Ghartey said it cost the state more when a convict was sentenced to six months’ imprisonment for stealing a cellular phone than if the convict was made to embark on community service.
Speaking at a stakeholders’ meeting on the Justice For All Project in Accra, the Attorney-General said there was the need for persons convicted for petty crimes to be made to embark on community service in areas such as sanitation, instead of being imprisoned.
For instance, he suggested that convicted persons could be made to wear special uniforms and work in collaboration with Zoomlion to improve sanitation in the country.
The Justice For All Project is an initiative of the Ministry of Justice and Attorney-General’s Department and is aimed at bringing justice to the doorstep of all citizens, especially the vulnerable in the society.
According to him, custodial sentencing of petty cases such as the stealing of goats, cellular phones, among others, had contributed to the congestion in the country’s prisons.
He also called for a review of the sentencing and remand system policies as part of efforts to decongest the prisons in order to ensure that the state benefited from the services of convicts.
Presenting a report on the Justice For All Project, a Principal State Attorney, Mrs Stella Badu, said the AG’s Department had called for the dockets on 100 people who had been remanded in mental homes.
She said the dockets on those people who were sent to the mental homes on the orders of judges would be reviewed.
According to Mrs Badu, under the project, juveniles could not be kept on remand for more than three months, adding that the project would be replicated in all prisons across the country soon.
For his part, a Supreme Court judge, Mr Justice Jones Dotse, said it was sad that the country did not have a sentencing policy.
According to him, judges had been granted too much discretion which sometimes was not exercised judiciously.
He said it was important for guidelines to be set to bring uniformity into the sentencing of accused persons in order to avoid the miscarriage of justice.
Mr Justice Dotse also called for the proper documentation of cases, adding that policemen must be given a definite time frame within which to finish investigations in order to bring remarkable success into the criminal justice system.
The President of the Ghana Bar Association (GBA), Nii Osah Mills, said the GBA was very much concerned about the issue of remand prisoners in the country.
He, therefore, pleaded with the various stakeholders to do more to curb the incidence of the increasing number of remand prisoners in the prisons.
The acting Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP), Ms Gertrude Aikins, suggested that two investigators should be attached to each case to ensure that a case could be continued in the absence of one of them.