The judiciary in Anambra State must rise to the occasion and adopt restorative justice measures in handling criminal cases to reduce the alarming number of persons remanded or sentenced to correctional centres across the state.
The measure will help reduce the alarming number of Awaiting Trial Persons, ATPS, in correctional centres.
This is according to the State Coordinator of Rule of Law and Anti-Corruption, RoLAC programme, Josephine Onah, who spoke with a TNC correspondent in Awka, Anambra State Capital, on the situation at the Correctional Centres across the state.
A recent survey by an independent group, the Monitor, showed that across the correctional centres in the state, namely Awka, Onitsha, and Ekwulobia, the number of ATPs far outweighs that of convicts.
According to Onah, decongesting the correctional centres is a major reform that the RoLAC is working on to improve the administration of criminal justice delivery in the state.
She posited that courts needed to deploy restorative justice, where a court can order restitution, compensation, and even damages upon finding a person guilty of a criminal offense.
“The Court must have to appreciate the rising number of ATPs. It is no longer intended that everybody who commits an offence must be in prison.
“Decongestion of correctional centres for RoLAC is one of the vital areas of focus. The programme has commenced reform in this area by introducing restorative justice. Now a court can make an order for restitution, compensation and even damages upon finding a person accused of a criminal offence guilty,” she said.
Onah noted that the RoLAC is currently supporting ATP snapshots at Onitsha Correctional Centre to determine the current state of ATPs.
Afterwards, she said, they will present the report to the heads of criminal justice agencies to decide whether each agency is involved in decongesting the correctional centres.
The Anambra RoLAC coordinator berated how the police in the state obtain confessional statements across its facilities, noting that it makes a mess of all the investments made by the program, to engender transparency in the prosecution of criminal cases in the state.
According to her, the success of any criminal prosecution begins with the investigation, and if the police charged with investigating cannot conduct their processes transparently and uprightly, there is bound to be a miscarriage of justice.
“It is very worrisome how the Police obtain confessional statements today.
“Recently, in the case of Nnajiofor V. F.R.N 2019, the supreme court held that any judgement or ruling of the court where the confessional statement made in disobedience to the provision of the ACJA requiring the presence of a legal practitioner or any other person of the choice of the defendant or in alternative, a video recording of the making of the confessional statement will be incompetent and null and void. The police is not particularly used to this practice, and as we will always say, old habits are difficult to die, so we all have a duty to ensure that the police are urged to change their manner of doing investigations.
“The implication of this is that it helps the court to determine the voluntariness or otherwise of the confessional statement easily. The same thing we also have under judgement of the Supreme Court in Charles V. state of Lagos 2023. So, with all these authorities, it is clear that we must not be doing things the old way.
“The success of any criminal prosecution commences at the police level where it is, investigated.
“ So, we must have to get it right before we proceed to prosecute the defendant!
“The RoLAC invested heavily under its first dispensation RoLAC One, providing an ultra-modern Statement Taking Room at the State CID Annex at Awkuzu.
“Sadly, it has not been optimally utilized, and the Anambra Police Command is hereby urged to optimize the use,” she urged.
