The Federal Government has been blamed for aiding activities that encourage jail breaks across the country.
A group, Citizens United for Rehabilitation of Errants (CURE-Nigeria) said government encourages restiveness among prisoners, leading to jail breaks, by over-crowding the prisons with awaiting trial persons.
The group identified the inadequacy and, in most cases, decayed prison infrastructure as contributory factors to jail breaks.
Its Executive Director, Sylvester Uhaa, in a statement yesterday, regretted that the Fed Govt was yet to implement the various non-custodial methods, such as probation, community service and other alternatives to incarceration, provided in the Administration of Criminal Justice (ACJ) Act enacted over a year ago.
“I am not aware of anyone who has been released on probation or sentenced to community service as provided in the ACJ Act. Everyone is going to prison, leading to prison over-crowding, and putting pressure on weak and inadequate facilities.
“This is one reason why we are witnessing a wave of jail breaks,” Uhaa said.
He urged those managing the prison system, particularly the Ministry of Interior, to direct their efforts at decongesting the prisons rather than wasting time and tax payers’ money on probing incidents of jail break.
“The Federal Government should set up a task force to decongest the prisons as well as make funds available to ensure the full implementation of the ACJ Act to deal with the root causes of prison over-crowding.
“If you look at the jail breaks, most of the inmates involved are pre-trial detainees, to tell you that pre-trial detention is the main cause of jail breaks, so we have to do something to eliminate it,” Uhaa said.
He faulted the governments of Olusegun Obasanjo and Goodluck Jonathan for allegedly neglecting to upgrade the decayed prison infrastructure and improving the welfare of prison staff and prisoners to meet acceptable standards.
Uhaa, an expert in International Law, urged President Muhammadu Buhari to invest in the prison system by upgrading the prisons, and invest in prisoner rehabilitation through the introduction of education programmes and viable vocational skills to ease the return of ex-prisoners into society and reduce the high rates of recidivism.
He lamented that about two years after his group, with support from the Australian High Commission in Abuja and other agencies shipped in a 40-foot container of books and writing materials to donate to prison libraries, the materials are still in the group’s warehouse owing to the failure of the Prison authorities to provide shelves in the prison libraries for the books.