In 2002, Edward Coffie was arrested for car robbery. He was sent to the police headquarters in Accra for interrogation, after which he was taken to the law court for prosecution.
After the prosecution officer presented the case, the judge moved to adjourn, giving Coffie a warrant to stay in remand for two weeks.
Two weeks elapsed, but Coffie did not return to court. He ended up staying in prison for nine years without going to trial.
“The prison officers only told me the police will be coming for me, but they never did,” Coffie says.
A portrait of remand
The 2009 Ghana Prisons Service report showed that out of 39,454 prisoners across the country, 3,709 were on remand, with an average of about 4,000 in daily remand lock-up.
The report also indicated stealing as the most frequent offence, with nearly 4,000 cases, followed by ‘other’ offenses, with over 1,000 cases. Unlawful entry accounted for about 500 cases, and robbery comprised 450 cases.
Furthermore, the account revealed tuberculosis (TB) as the highest cause of death in the prisons, accounting for 30 per cent of deaths, followed by HIV/AIDS, comprising over 13 per cent.
Apart from the above challenges, these suspected criminals on remand may be kept in a separate area demarcated with barbed wires, as was the case in Nsawam, where Coffie was held.
They are not granted the liberty to engage in rehabilitation or reformation activities, and their living condition is nothing to write home about.
“I was not included in the things the real prisoners do,” says Solomon Attoh, who was also in remand at Nsawam for 8 years. He was released May 12th 2011. “I didn’t do anything. I just sat at one place.”
Coffie experienced similar segregation.
“I was not given either a prison attire or uniform,” he says. “The prison officers said I was not a convict, so the clothes I took to the prison was what I wore there.”
Isidore Tufuor, a lawyer and supervisor of the non-governmental Access to Justice programme, which helps remand prisoners access courts, says the problem is one that has bedeviled the prison service.
“A room originally built for about 20 people is now carrying two times the number, sometimes even more,” he says. “One of the things you see when you visit the remand prison is the prisoners degenerating physically, rashes all over, skin diseases. It’s a perennial thing.”
Alhassan Yahyah Seini is the director of Ghana’s Legal Aid Scheme.
“There is a certain discrimination against those who are presumed innocent in the prisons,” he says.
He attributes this to the refusal of prison officers to release remand prisoners when their warrant expires. Convicts, meanwhile, do not stay a day longer than the period given by the courts.
“But a remand prisoner will be kept even though his warrant has elapsed,” he continues. “When it comes to a remand person, he has to justify why he should be released, even though he has no warrant covering him.”
The cause of delay
Although the Constitution of the Republic of Ghana makes provision for arrested persons to have access to lawyers, remand prisoner are often denied this right.
“The people do not have access to lawyers, so quiet often they stay beyond what they should stay,” Seini states.
He further explains that the court has the mandate to convict as well as warrant a person into remand.
“With our crowded courts, if it gets late in the day without all the cases being called, the rest of the cases are left with out a date being fixed,” he says. “So the prosecutors carry their files and go, and that ends the matter.”
The court therefore loses the records, thereby giving no chance for that person to be brought back to court.
These are just a few of the flashpoints of a larger problem.
“It’s attributable to all the stakeholders,” says Tufuor, whose organization has discharged 400 remand prisoners since 2009.
“When it comes to arresting people, they are very swift, but conducting investigation and presenting the person before court for trial, the problem comes up. Test delays and vehicles are not available, so they cannot prosecute. So the person stays in remand.”
Furthermore, evidence is not sent to the attorney general’s department, so the state can’t decide whether or not to prosecute.
“You go to the judges, and they also cannot prosecute if the evidence has not come to the floor.”
In its quest to ensure members are law abiding, society shows public outburst if prison officers dare release somebody who the public thinks is a criminal and who the judge released because the prosecution is not ready.
The issue of legal aid
The Legal Aid Scheme is a body mandated by an act of parliament to provide free legal assistance to those who cannot afford the services of a lawyer.
The system caters for two categories of people: those who find themselves protecting the constitution, and those who need to protect their legal rights but are not capable of assessing legal assistance because of cost.
Legal assistance is therefore the right of every citizen of Ghana, yet its accessibility is a problem.
The scheme employs 14 lawyers nationwide. Both Accra and Kumasi have three. Ho, Sunyani and Tamale have two each. There’s one in both Koforidua and Cape Coast.
As a result of the activities of legal aid, a lot of lapsed warrant has been corrected, says Seini.
“Some who had to be released were released, either on bail or just discharged,” he adds. “The percentage of remand people has fallen form figures from the prisons.”
Albeit, the scheme director says the cases that are handled by the lawyers keep increasing significantly over the years.
“In 2008, 6,212 cases were handled by the legal aid scheme across the country; it has since seen an increase by 400 in 2009 and 1000 in 2010.”
As the number of cases increase, the burden on lawyers also raises, and this poses a challenge to the effectiveness of the scheme.
The government introduced the Justice For All programme to decongest the country’s prisons of the large numbers of remand prisoners.
According to a document from the attorney general’s department, in 2009 and 2010 special courts were held to consider the cases of prisoners with expired warrants.
“On 29 July and 1 August 2011, special courts again sat in Nsawan and dealt with 245 cases. Out of these, 71 were discharged, 75 granted bill, and nine convicted. The remaining 90 applications were refused / withdrawn or adjourned to a later date,” the document states.
Remaining Challenges
“It all depends on budget allocations,” says Tufour. “Funds, funds, all the time.”
He believes government priority plays a roll in the lack of equipment the police service needs for swift investigations.
“It takes minutes for somebody to be arrested at the airport with cocaine, but for the prisoner, it takes years. So it is all about priorities.”
The attorney general’s department of the Ministry of Justice is also not properly resourced.
Hans Emmanuel Adde, legal services coordinator of NGO Projects Abroad, thinks the attorney general’s department has become a transient quarters for lawyers.
“They are not being treated as professionals. So a single criminal case passes through half a dozen newly qualified solicitors before it appears on a court list.”
The Legal Aid Scheme also faces shortcomings in the discharge of it’s duties.
“The basic challenge is lack of lawyers,” says Seini. “We have over 1,000 people in prison without warrant and just a few lawyers.”
Government says it will pay legal aid lawyers 20 per cent of the Bar’s standard rate. But the money is not easy to come by. The non-payment of regular fees frustrates the lawyers, as some decide to do it gratis or abort the case altogether.
“We try to employ some lawyers, but certainly the conditions under which lawyers work as public servants is not the thing that many lawyers will want to take.”
The Department of Social Welfare, which oversees some of Ghana’s social security policies, like Livelihood Empowerment Against Poverty programme.
When ex-convicts come out from prison, there is no social security policy to help them start life afresh and fit back into the society.
“The social department is not working,” says Tufour. “If you are in prison, and you come out, you have to cope somehow. For those who cannot cope and have not got any friends or any family members, will have to survive through the committing of crimes.”
Attoh has no social support, so he has to earn a living by helping his aunt in her food business.
“My greatest problem now that I am out is a job,” he laments. “I don’t have a job. All I want is to wake up and have a place to go and work to earn some money.”
Although he is coping with the difficulties of a free world, he is tempted to go back into the activities that took him to remand.
“What I am going through now is very difficult and I think that if I don’t restrain myself and contain my hunger, I will go back to those activities that took me to Nsawan.”
The way forward
Seeing the need to fill in the gap and reintegrate these suspected criminals back into society, at least one non-governmental organizations has taken the mantle and started a school of restoration for ex-convicts.
These newcomers in the world they left for years are taken through teachings that will heal their wounded hearts and reconcile them back into society and with their families.
Fraser Ayee Alias Kawawa, an ex-convict released in 2009 after being in prison for robbery and terrorism since 1988, was initially on death row and ultimately pardoned and released. He was in prison when he heard a message that changed his life during a donation by Royal House Chapel.
The church after the visit decided to organize a school of restoration for ex-convicts, and Ayee was among the first batch of students.
“Rev. Sam Korankye Ankrah taught us about forgiveness, responsibility and how to reconcile with our society and family. He bought bicycles for us, the first 10 students, and also gave us GH¢10 from Monday to Friday and clothing in exchange for labor.”
Ayee, now a graduate from the school, has found inner peace and has readjusted back into his society, but others who do not have the same opportunity as Ayee will have to ‘survive’ somehow.
“All we want the government to do is to give us work to do,” Attoh pleads. “If we are given jobs, we will not have any problem and the country will be more peaceful.”
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