The Research and Development Team of PRAWA has commenced assessment studies on the Enhancing Transportation of Awaiting Trial Prisoners (ATPs) component of the Speeding-Up Criminal Justice System in Enugu State Project. Already, the project has yielded multi-sectoral coalitions in all its segments and is progressing with great results. The DFID-funded Nigeria Justice for All Programme (J4A), in partnership with PRAWA, is working with the Government of Enugu State to “Speed up Criminal Justice in Enugu State”.

The aim of the intervention is to identify root causes of delays in the criminal justice system and support the development and implementation of cross-sector solutions, involving state actors. Already the first phase of the project which was completed in March 2012 involved series of consultations with justice sector stakeholders and led to identification of ‘root causes’ of delays in the criminal justice process, as well as proffer a range of potential solutions.

Stakeholders consulted included criminal justice organizations, civil society organizations, defendants/prisoners and victims. Based on these consultations, six priority ‘project’ areas were identified to be implemented by the respective agencies with the support of J4A. These projects were designed to be implemented as pilots to test the viability of the approach and to enable them to be fine-tuned where necessary.

The programme will then support the Enugu State justice sector to replicate the projects more broadly to extend the impact across the state. One of the identified major causes of delays in criminal justice delivery was scheduled as the sixth component of the intervention. It is the non-appearance of accused persons in court at the scheduled hearing date and time, which often leads to the adjournment of the case to another day.

The major cause of this is the inability to transport remand prisoners to court as and when due. Already the first strategy and activity of this intervention which consists of assisting the Nigerian Prisons Service to carry out an assessment of their capacity to transport remand prisoners to court viz aviz vehicles and their loading capacity, escort vehicles, fuel allowance per (day/week/month/quarter), drivers, escort duty staff (armed squad), spare parts and vehicle maintenance allowance (monthly/quarterly/annually) etc.) and to identify and analyze gaps has started the assessment studies of the project.