Preamble

Recalling the Kampala Declaration of 1996 which takes into account the limited effectives of imprisonment, especially for those serving short sentences, and the cost of imprisonment to the whole society;

Noting the growing interest in measures, which replace custodial sentences and the promising development across the world in this regard;

Further noting with appreciation that the importance of the Kampala Declaration was recognized when it was noted in and annexed to a resolution on International co-operation for the improvement of prison conditions in developing countries by the United Nations 6^th Session of the Commission on Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice in Vienna, Austria (28 April – 9 May 1997);

Bearing in mind  the United Nations Standard Minimum Rules for Non-custodial Measure (Tokyo Rules) 1990 and the United Nations Standard Minimum Rules for the Administration of Juvenile Justice (The Beijing Rules) 1985;

Considering that the level of overcrowding is inhuman;

Recalling the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights reaffirmation of the dignity inherent a human being and the prohibition of inhuman and degrading treatment;

Welcoming the success of Zimbabwe Community Service Scheme and its adoption in 1997 by the Government of Zimbabwe following a three year trial period;

The participants of the National Conference on Alternatives to Imprisonment in Nigeria, held in Abuja from 8-10 February 2000, observe the following:

Imprisonment as the most easily and readily resorted to punishment for all manners of offences were questioned – from the point of view of its benefits to society, cost effectiveness, and its serving the cause of justice.  Prisons, it was agreed are overcrowded, ill-equipped, ill-managed and depressing places.  They damage many of those who are inside them – those who are locked inside them and those who work inside them

The United Nations Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners constitute the basic principles and Standards that are intended to be implemented.  Examples of these principles are:-

• Prisons shall be well-ordered communities, i.e. they shall be places where there is no danger to life, health and personal integrity;
• Prisons shall be places in which no discrimination is shown in the treatment of prisoners;
• When a court sentences an offender to imprisonment, it imposes a punishment, which is inherently extremely afflictive. Prison conditions shall not seek to aggravate this inherent affliction;
• Prison activities shall focus as much as possible on helping prisoners to resettle in the community after the prison sentence has been served. For this reason prison rules and regimes should not limit prisoners’ freedoms, external social contacts and possibilities for personal development more than is absolutely necessary. Prison rules and regimes should be conducive to adjustment and integration in normal community life.

Clearly changes were regarded as long overdue and from the views expressed by the participants, changes have been agreed in previous gatherings and instances/as well as recommended, by somehow never implemented – see annex

The general reasons for this were spelt out by the participants in one way or another along the following broad lines:

• The criminal justice system is comprised of agencies that work without coordination.
• Changes need to be made in the role of the police in the criminal justice system.
• The count machinery is over-loaded with cases, slow and not readily accessible to all.
• Prison are a low-priority in Nigeria, as in many other African countries; and where three quarters of the prison population is comprised of poor and powerless people, prison are seen as not being worth the time, energy or resources needed to improve them.
• Imprisonment is all too readily used even for small offences, as a punishment of first instance rather than of last resort.

The conference, therefore, made recommendations against the background of the above principles and problems.  These recommendations, it was believed, would be best achieved by the sharing of problems and solutions.

Recommendations for reform were made under different heads such as:

• Improvement of the formal Judicial machinery
• Alternatives within the formal justice system
• Alternatives within the non-formal justice system
• Strategies for implementation.

Many of the suggestions under the different heads overlapped and this indicated clearly the urgent need for cooperation and better coordination among the different agencies of the criminal justice system,

IMPROVING THE FORMAL JUSTICE SYSTEM

The justice machinery was found wanting in fulfilling its self-evident task – that of providing justice to all the citizens irrespective of class, caste, creed, economic or other status, sex, age, ethnicity, race or religion. The formal justice machinery has not lived up to its declared principle of making justice easy, accessible, equal and equitable for all. Suggestions for change and improvement relate to all the agencies that are involved in the criminal justice process – police, courts and prisons. The measures that need to be urgently incorporated are:

• Decriminalization of many offences that should lie outside the domain of the legal/judicial machinery, but should be in the area of the social/ educational / reformatory domain.
• The exercise of the powers of the police to arrest and detain need to be reviewed, restricted and monitored.
• The procedures that precede and surround criminal trials are long-winded, arduous and cause unnecessary delays. Rules and procedures need to be reassessed, changed where necessary, cut short wherever possible, and every effort made to work towards speedy trials that prevent people arrested from languishing in custody on account of delays.
• Court procedures also need to be made more intelligible, understandable and generally simplified so that they are understood by legal practitioners and their clients.
• Principles relating to bail need to be further articulated in a way that will make it a right in order to make it accord with the constitutional provisions, as well as the broad principles that accord with the wider philosophy of justice and fair play in the society.
• The sureties that are demanded when granting bail should be realistic and reporting requirements may be introduced in bail procedures. Property or gender requirements should not be a condition for anybody to be refused standing as a surety.
• The agencies of the criminal justice system should work in a spirit of cooperation and coordination.

The underlying imperative seen as incumbent upon all prison administration is the necessity of ensuring that prisons are safe environments – safe for prisoners, for staff and safe for the community.

The living conditions in a prison were regarded as a crucial factor in determining a prisoner’s sense of self-respect and human dignity.

• Overcrowding was seen as a major problem which needed to be looked into and remedies for it to be urgently sought. The remedies could be both in the area of better planning in the prison and coordination between the police courts and prisons.
• The problem of pre-trial prisoners is in need of immediate attention. The remedies here lie in the other areas of the criminal justice systems, such as police and its power of arrest and the slowness of the judicial process.
• Adequate pre-release training for prisoners is essential both by way of damage reduction and constructive preparation for life after release.
• Regular, competent and constructive inspections that lead to the enhancement of public information and to improvement measures by authorities should be carried out.
• With the assistance of the media, public information and awareness about prisons and the criminal justice system should be improved.
• Training and sensitization of prison staff needs to be carried out regularly, with uniformity throughout the country.
• Prisons should have in-house training periodically for general revitalization and specific crisis handling by its staff .staff need to be trained also in how to inform and familiarize the outside world with what the prison does and hopes to achieve. Data collection management and utilization should guide informed policies and good practice
• Civil society groups should be included in prison reform work and in other stages of the criminal justice process. These should include NGO’s, well informed professionals, concerned citizens with some expertise in the area of criminal justice, religious groups, etc.

ALTERNATIVES TO IMPRISONMENT:

Accepting that imprisonment is all too easily resorted to, and that it has negative and damaging, rather than positive and constructive consequences, and emphasizing that strategies to reduce prison population were urgently needed the Conference made some recommendations regarding suitable alternatives to imprisonment.

It was generally agreed that this area had to be carefully handled, and legislators, the executive, the judiciary and the public need to be appraised of what ‘alternatives to custody really mean.  Measures towards exploring alternatives need to be preceded by programmes of public education that would increase an awareness of what the prison achieves or does not achieve.

Alternatives in the formal justice system.

The following measures were recommended as suitable for minor offences/offenders:

• Fines can be imposed for offences wherever appropriate. Priority should be given to payment of fine rather than imprisonment. Provisions for granting time for payment of fine and allowing installment payment should be observed.
• Wherever possible, and for offences meticulously specified, community service orders can be built into the sentencing options. To assist in this process the working of this alternative in other areas (like Zimbabwe) can be studied and a scheme suitable to the particular circumstances in Nigeria be then formulated and tried.
• Probation and probation services need to be reviewed and revitalized.

For some offences prison was not only meaningless for the offender but also for the offended.  The principle of restitution should be invoked, given a higher profile and applied with the regard to the justice and fairness agreed upon in a democratic society.

Alternatives in the non-formal justice system

It was generally recognized that offences and offending were dealt with in the community, even as they were being handled by the criminal justice machinery.  To keep victims in the picture, to redress the damage caused by some offences and to prevent many conflicts and disputes from actually becoming offences and crimes, some strategies were considered with the intention of exploring them as other ways of providing justice before ‘the horse has bolted’.  This was based on the understanding shared by the participants that the formal criminal justice machinery should have a clear yet limited role in a democratic society and that as it should not be used to resolve such problems as are not really relevant to it. ’Depenalization’, rather than over penalization, should be the guiding principle in the process of handling conflicts in society.

Mediation and conciliation between conflicting parties, through trained neutrally and mutually agreed and accepted mediators, can be one way of attempting to reduce the escalation of conflicts that border on becoming legal disputes.

Along the lines of a Prevention is better than cure’ approach, the public could be educated and informed about the advantages of avoiding legal disputes, nipping them in the bud and amicably resolving those that have not been taken to the formal machinery.

Work needs to be done along the lines of the systematic examination of the relations between people’s law and the state law so that the logic of he one is not transferred to the other.

Avoiding a vindictive punitive approach so that the parties get ‘justice’ was seen as a wholesome approach that fosters constructive relationships in a society.  Offences like assault and neighborhood disputes, offences relating to movable property, cheating, breach of trust (where the value involved is relatively small), family disputes, dowry demands are some areas that could from the subject of justice through mediation and conciliation.

Alternative Dispute Resolution is an accepted mode of resolving disputes and is widely used in civil matters.  It should be seen as the option that might take disputes out of the penal justice arena and help the parties to resolve them with the assistance of an agreed mediator whose decision is binding and final.

Alternative Dispute Resolution needs to be available as an option and developed in both the terms of principles and methods, and in full accordance with the requirement of human rights and gender sensitive agenda.

Restitution and compensation need to find a place in dispute/conflict resolution and could from a vital part of justice in the community.  Such ways could prove to be more wholesome as ‘justice providers’, given their emphasis on satisfaction to the offended, who more often than not, benefit little from formal criminal justice.
STRATEGIES FOR IMPLEMENTATION

Apart from innovations and improvements in the justice process that constitutes penal reform, there are general features and factors in each society that contribute in a big way towards achieving the goal of justice, not simply judicial but social and economic justice, for the bulk of the people who are socially and economically disadvantaged and who are bypassed by the existing justice processes.  For these, some general suggestions need to be made.

• A High Powered Committee involving Federal Ministry of Justice and Federal Ministry of Internal Affairs, Prison, the Judiciary and NGOs should be constituted to consider appropriate policy directive for dealing with awaiting trial cases.
• The Chief Justice in consultation with the Chief Judges of States should issue practice direction for lower courts.
• The inspector General of Police and the Controller General of Prisons should issue appropriate orders for the guidelines of their respective personnel in their treatment of awaiting trial cases.
• A project for the preparation of a sentencing manual for the judiciary should be undertaken soonest.
• Stakeholders in the process of change should maximize opportunities to wield influence through existing institutions and mechanisms, e.g. the gathering of State Attorneys – General and the Speakers Forum.
• A National Monitoring Committee on Alternatives to Imprisonment should be set-up to implement the recommendations; This Committee should be made up of the Ministries of Justice and Internal Affairs, the Police, the Prisons, Nigerian Bar Association, Nigerian Law Reform Commission, National Human Rights Commission, NGOs and the Academia.
• An Interim Working group should be established with the object of seeing that the present recommendations are pushed through up to when the above National Monitoring Committee is put in place.
• Legislation needs to be enacted to improve delivery of justice and eliminate discriminatory practices. A drafting group should be set up to review the Criminal Procedure Act and the Criminal Procedure Code to reflect the reforms suggested at the Conference for presentation to the appropriate authorities for legislation.
• A Prison Service Commission should be established.
• Provisions for the adequate logistical support and facilities, as well as the improvements of the welfare of the Judiciary, Police and Prison personnel should be made.
• Awareness campaigns need to be launched so that the public is influenced about what justice is and should be, and how disastrous the malfunctioning of any of its processes can be. This awareness includes programmes and campaigns conducted in educational institutions and public gatherings where people get the opportunity to expose their views and ask questions.
• The ‘media’ should be encouraged to play a constructive role and support the campaign for justice,
• The international standards recognized by all nations as crucial for justice and human rights in all societies, need to become a part and parcel of the domestic law.
• Civil society involvement, in as many imaginative ways as possible within the framework of the principles emphasized at the Conference is the vital ingredient of penal reform and access to justice in a spirit of harmony and cooperation.

ABUJA 10/02/2000