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Declining Prison Facilities As Impediment To The Rehabilitation Of Offenders
CHAPTER ONE -- [Total Page(s) 6]
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THE HISTORICAL BACKGROUND OF PRISON
Historians
have documented the existence of prisons in ancient Greece and Rome.
For example, the Mamertine Prison, constructed in Rome in the 7th
century B.C., consisted of a vast network of dungeons under the city’s
main sewer (Champion, 2009). These subterranean cells held political
dissidents and criminals for short periods of time in cramped, miserable
conditions. However, the practice of confining wrongdoers for long
periods as a form of punishment was not widespread until after the 15th
century (Champion, 2009).
With the march of time and advancement of
knowledge and civilization, the conditions of prisons also improved
considerably. Since the present day penology centres round imprisonment
as a measure of rehabilitation of offenders, the prisons are no longer
mere detention houses for the offenders but they seek to reform inmates
for their future life. The modern techniques of punishment lay greater
emphasis on reformation, correction and rehabilitation of offenders
(paranjape, 2011: 418). The modern prison system in Nigeria is
essentially based on the British prison model which in itself is an
outcome of prison development in America during the late eighteenth
century.
THE ORIGIN OF PRISONS IN NIGERIA
The origin of modern
prisons service in Nigeria is traceable to 1861 (Nigerian Prisons
Service, 2013). The progressive incursion of the British into the
hinterland and the establishment of British protectorate toward the end
of the nineteenth century necessitated the establishment of the prisons
as the last link in the Criminal Justice System (Elias, 1967). Prisons
modelled on the one first established in Lagos in 1872 spread across the
country in line with the gradual expansion of the colonial jurisdiction
and in 1876, the prison ordinances came into force (PTS Kaduna, 1991).
Thus, in 1910, there already were prisons in Degema, Calabar, Onitsha,
Benin, Ibadan, Sapele, Jebba and Lokoja (Orakwe, 2014). In 1920, a
Commission was set up to report on prison conditions and in 1932; a
borstal was established in Enugu (Egu, 1990; PTS Kaduna, 1991: 14). The
prisoners were in the main used for public works and other jobs for the
colonial administration (Arthur, 1991). According to Orakwe (2014), it
was not until 1934 that any meaningful attempt was made to introduce
relative modernization into prison service. It was at this time that
Colonel V. L. Mabb was appointed Director of Prisons by the then
Governor, Sir Donald Cameron (Orakwe, 2014).
NIGERIAN PRISONS TODAY
The
abolition of Native Authority Prisons on the 1st of April, 1968 and the
subsequent unification of the Prisons Service in Nigeria therefore
marked the beginning of the Nigerian Prisons Service. In 1971, the
government white paper on the reorganization of the prison was released.
The establishment and growth of the prison is backed by various
statutes, amongst which was the Prison Act No. 9 of 1972 (Nigerian
Prisons Service, 1979; Orakwe, 2014), which was reviewed in 1990 and is
currently under review. The Act, which is known as CAP 366, Laws of the
Federal Republic of Nigeria 1990, defines itself as ‘an act to make
comprehensive provisions for the administration of prisons in Nigeria
and other matters ancillary thereto’ (Nigerian Prisons Service, 1990:
1). The prison is charged, inter alia, with the responsibility of taking
custody of those legally detained, identifying causes of their
behaviour and retraining them to become useful citizens in the society
(Federal Government of Nigeria, 1990: 3-5; Orakwe, 2014). From the
foregoing, it seems clear that though the Decree makes secure custody
the first role of the prisons, it also makes it explicit that reform and
rehabilitation are the ultimate aims of the Prison Service.
Today,
there are 235 prisons across the 36 states and Federal Capital Territory
(FCT) with a total capacity of 47,284. The inmate population has
gradually grown from 43,312 to about 54,144 (male 53,069, female 1,075),
with approximately 25,000 personnel
(http://www.prisons.gov.ng/about/history.php). The Prisons Service now
has a command structure that boasts of 8 zonal commands, 36 states
commands, 1 FCT command, 144 prisons including farm centres and 83
satellite prisons. It also has four training schools, one Staff College
and 2 Borstal Institutions (Orakwe, 2014).
The above history, though
clearly partial, is important to consider as: “[T]he correspondence
between the ideal models of state institutions and their actual
operation is complicated by the very process through which they come
into being†(Aguirre, 2005: 11). We should not forget however that state
institutions do not come into being once and for all; they are always
in a process of coming into being. It is this fact that makes it
imperative to focus analysis on ‘their actual operation’, their
practices as well as their purported values or penal philosophies.
Whilst
educational provision for offenders usually has the primary aim of
reducing reoffending, the association between a lack of basic skills and
offending is, as we have seen, not readily demonstrated (Harper and
Chitty, 2005). Education does however have much further reaching
benefits that may have more indirect, but no less significant impacts.
Oreh (2006) rightly observed that education in prison is necessary
because its provision will make the prisons become places of continuous
and informal learning rather than ‘schools of crime’. Although there is
very little research in Nigeria on prisons education (for example,
Yakubu, 2002; Mango, 2006; Oreh, 2006; Evawoma-Enuku, 2006), inter-state
research and international meta-analyses demonstrate the significant
contribution that education and employment make to the reduction in
reoffending rates. According to the Nigerian Prison Service Manual
(2011), the realization of the object of rehabilitation of convicted
offenders is to be done through a complicated set of mechanisms
consisting among others: conscientiousness, group work, case work
session, recreational activities, religious services and adult and
remedial education programmes, educational development project, skills
acquisition programme, mid-range industrial production, agricultural
service and after-care service programme. The prison’s services
providers should not only identify the causes of the prisons’ inmates
anti-social behaviour but also endeavours to set them on the road to
reform through induced self-rediscovery and eventual change for the
better.
CHAPTER ONE -- [Total Page(s) 6]
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ABSRACT - [ Total Page(s): 1 ]The study was designed to establish whether declining prison facilities interfered with the rehabilitation of offenders in Ikoyi prison, Lagos State, Nigeria. An approach drawing from both quantitative and qualitative methodologies was adopted. A cross-sectional survey and in-depth interview of prisoners enabled the exploration of specific objectives formulated around the purpose of the study, which included the need to know how ‘needs assessment and classification of offenders correlated ... Continue reading---
