Non-custodial measures are alternatives to imprisonment or detention for individuals convicted of crimes. They are aimed at reducing the use of incarceration, promoting rehabilitation, reintegration into society, and reducing the risk of reoffending. Some common non-custodial measures include community service, parole, probation, restorative justice and so on.
Speaking on the sidelines of an event on dissemination strategies for the implementation of non custodial measures in the Federal Capital Territory, organized by the Rule of Law and Anti-Corruption (RoLAC) program, Professor Uju Agomoh, an expert in justice and prison reform, reveals that 70% of inmates in correctional facilities accross Nigeria are awaiting trail.
She says that while this figure is much higher depending on the facility, the federal government and Nigerian correctional Service could significantly cut down that number if it adopts non custodial measures.
“70 percent of those who are in custody are there not as convicted persons and that statistics is the statistics about the general for the whole country. There are correctional centres where that number is about 90 percent, 92, 93 percent of those in their custody being those who haven’t been convicted. So you can imagine that, you know, correctional management and dealing with these persons will be such a big problem for correctional officers.
“There are people who have committed offenses and offenses are minor. Now, by putting them there and feeding them, those oppressors, not only that you’re wasting the money of the state, but also you’re exposing them to more criminality, exposing the innocent ones to meet hardened criminals that they would not have met before, who now can now start teaching them what they were not into.
“So, we must use imprisonment as a measure of last resort. So, it’s only when it’s extremely necessary because there are people who will need to be kept away for some time to reform them, rehabilitate them, deal with the risk factors before you release them.
“When you look at non-custodial measures, there are measures that encourage you to give sanctions without necessarily feeding on state resources.
“There are also different parts. Some can be a combination of different things. But under the Nigerian Correctional Service Act of 2019, Section 37, Subsection 1, you have these provisions that I have mentioned.
“Community service, focusing on giving something back to society. Probation, providing opportunity to deal with the risk factors for the offender and focusing on the offender. Parole, which looks at reintegration, promoting opportunity to reintegrate back into the community. And then restorative justice, which focuses on the victim. And this gives the court a wide range to choose from and provide us.
A Project Officer at RoLAC, Peter Omenka, said that while a number of justice and law enforcement agencies have shown desire to adopt non-custodial approaches, they voiced concerns over some logistical chalenges.
“In as much as they wanted to be part of the change story, they had a number of impediments inhibiting their desire to engage. They were asking questions that if you want us to implement plea bargaining provisions, if you want us to implement sentencing guidelines, if you want us to do all those things, are we looking at the logistical requirements that should be in place before these are implemented? For instance, Nigeria has a constitution, the judiciary has practice directions. None of those points to sentencing guidelines. None of those specifically points to that. And they are asking themselves, should we leave what the law is saying, or what the practice directions are saying, and do what the act is now saying, which conflicts with what the constitution is saying.
“So there is a need for reconciliation between those two pieces of legislation, without which they will be in a difficult position to implement some of the sections.
“Today in the room, there’s one judge who is there, she, when fingers were pointing at the judiciary for not encouraging the implementation of non-custodial measures, she stood up in defense of the judiciary. One example she gave was that, okay, you bring people who committed petty offenses to us, and you want us to make orders around non-custodial measures, and you want us to sentence them to community service or so. Now, if we sentence them to community service, who, where is the logistics to check that, to monitor, make sure the person is committed to it, who supervises, where are the records, and so on.
“So the judiciary needs to be sure that that’s in place before they can start using these measures, failing which, they will rather sentence the person to three months’ imprisonment against what they would have loved to do.
“And this is not just true for the judiciary, it’s true for a number of justice agencies. They’ve been complaining that these provisions are beautiful in themselves, but there is a logistical requirement which has not been addressed.
A 2022 publication on NCS website reveals that the capacity of Nigerian Custodial Centers stands at around 58,300 as against its population of over 75, 000 inmates, making it overcrowded by yet to be convicted suspects. Flaws in Nigeria’s criminal justice system, with proceedings often going on for years without conclusion, have significantly contributed to the high population of ‘awaiting trial inmates’ in these facilities.
For instance, inmates may get detained for what should pass as petty crimes and would subsequently be forgotten in prison due to a seemingly unending adjournment of court appearances, consuming scarce government resources and the fundamental rights of these inmates violated.
While the implementation of non-custodial measures, as captured by the Administration of Criminal Justice Act, (ACJA 2015) and the Nigeria Correctional Service Act (NCSA 2019), directly addresses the issue of overcrowded prisons, data reveals that these measures are not being utilized optimally.
