On Wednesday, a total of 12 remand prisoners at the Nsawam Medium Security Prisons (NMSP) in the Eastern Region were discharged under the Justice for All Programme (JFAP).
The JFAP is a state-led intervention, established in 2007, to alleviate prison overcrowding by setting up a mobile in-prison court sittings.
It ensures that all individuals, regardless of their background or financial status, have the ability to have their legal rights and grievances heard and addressed and the appropriate judgement given.
It is worthy of note that the Programme adjudicates only cases of prisoners on remand.
If the court decides to put you on remand, it means you will go to prison until your trial begins.
This means remand is an important aspect of trial except that it has its own issues.
For instance, even though remanded prisoners are usually detained separately from sentenced prisoners, due to prison overcrowding, they are sometimes held in a shared accommodation with sentenced prisoners.
The records say in most countries, remand prisoners are considered innocent until proven guilty by a court of law, and may be granted greater privileges than sentenced prisoners, such as wearing one’s own clothes rather than prison uniform, voting in elections, being entitled to additional visiting hours per week, and not being required to complete prison-related work.
However, it is said that In Ghana, remand prisoners do not enjoy these privileges, as they are even deprived of the right to appeal their cases.
Some media programmes show that remand prisoners complain of the fact that their cases are not being called to get them to court to prove if they are guilty or not.
According to some of them, they have been on remand for years, and believe they would have served their sentences already, even if they had been proven guilty.
The difficulties remand prisoners face outweigh the privileges, if any in the country.
Remand causes hardships that are punishment in themselves for the suspects.
For instance, it causes over-population or over-crowding, which is a good ground for spread of contagious diseases
Besides, it deprives some of the suspects the freedom to choose to do some of the things they would have preferred such as choosing to immediately go to hospital for healthcare.
Some of the cases that have sent some people to remand are not all that serious, so to speak, and the worse aspect of it is that it appears they have been consigned to oblivion as their cases are not called.
Imagine that some of the 12 remand prisoners discharged at the Nsawam Medium Security Prisons under the JFAP committed theft and had been on remand between five and 12 years.
The Ghanaian Times applauds the JFAP, for, if nothing at all, it restores people’s freedom given them by nature, dignity and human rights and gives them the opportunity to start meaningful life afresh.
And as remand prisoners are getting justice, the prisons would eventually get decongested and thereby naturally resolve the related problems like sicknesses and poor healthcare; and poor feeding and associated issues.
Therefore, more frequent JFAP sittings must be arranged henceforth.