SOURCE:

Faculty: Law
Department: Law

CONTRIBUTORS:

Igwe, O. I.
Umenweke, M. N.

ABSTRACT:

Imprisonment is a measure which results in removing an offender from the outside world. One of the purposes of imprisonment is to protect the society and reform those who are involved in crime. People who are in prison custody belong to special class of citizens who their fundamental rights to self-determination of personal liberty, privacy, freedom of expression, right to peaceful assembly and association, freedom of movement, among others are regulated by the laws governing the prisons. Although prisoners’ rights may be diminished by the needs and exigencies of the institutional environment, prisoners are not wholly stripped of their constitutional protections while they are imprisoned. Since prisoners are human beings by nature of their birth, they are entitled to all the rights of free citizens save those withdrawn from them by law, expressly or by implication. Despite the above, the remaining rights of prisoners are faced with a lot of challenges under the Nigerian law. This research became imperative in the light of the global campaign for the protection of prisoners’ rights. The work examined the challenges to the protection of prisoners’ rights under the Nigerian law. This was done with a view to identifying the legal and operational bottlenecks therein aimed at making useful suggestions that will lead to the introduction of a new legal regime in prison system in Nigeria. The research adopted the doctrinal, empirical and narrative approach to research. By doctrinal method, the work reviewed existing literature and laws on prison and prisoners’ rights for the purpose of identifying gap in knowledge. By empirical method, questionnaires were administered to sample prison population of Abakaliki, Enugu and Kuje prisons which helped in the collection of data with respect to contemporary challenges to the protection of prisoners’ rights in Nigeria. The research revealed that there are varieties of factors militating against the protection of prisoners’ rights in Nigeria. They include lacunae in the prison laws, delay in the determination of cases in court, attitudes of government and the public, attitude of prison staff, financial incapability, illiteracy, lack of awareness, overcrowding, inadequate accommodations, high number of awaiting trial cases, obsolete/dilapidated infrastructural facilities most of which were built by colonial administration, poor feeding, among others. It was based on the above that recommendations were made to wit: amendment of the Prisons Act to bring it in line with United Nations Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners, (the Mandela Rules, 2015), the research also recommended for a further amendment to the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria 1999 (as amended) by deleting item 48 in Part 1of the Second Schedule which exclusively reserved the ownership and control of prisons in Nigeria for the Federal Government. By this amendment, the matter of prisons will be on the Concurrent Legislative List in Part 11of the said Schedule. The research also recommended for the introduction of a new legal regime that will permit private sectors to establish and run prisons in Nigeria with the central regulatory body vested in the Federal Government. The research also recommneded for the utilisation of other sentencing options such as community services, parole system, discharge after conviction, payment of compensation to the victim of crime, probation among others in all the states of the Federation.