CORONAVIRUS AND DECONGESTION OF CORRECTIONAL CENTRES IN NIGERIA

Minister of Interior, Rauf Aregbesola has predicted that if there’s an outbreak of the coronavirus in any of the correctional facilities across Nigeria, it will be a national disaster. Nigeria currently has more 80 confirmed cases of the Covid-19 and some additional suspected ones while several people are being quarantined. Some 11m individuals are estimated to be held in custody across the globe, according to the World Health Organisation, while approximately 30m people worldwide are thought to move between their communities and prisons every year. Overcrowding  inmates with pre-existing conditions, and a significant proportion of older inmates who are most at risk for serious complications from the virus. It will test the resilience of correctional centres and justice systems nationwide.

Minister of Interior Rauf Aregbesola has called for immediate decongestion of correctional centres to prevent the spread of Coronavirus. He has warned that if drastic measures are not taken now, the situation could quickly spiral out of control. “We’re still in time to act and to implement pre-emptive releases and home detention,” said Aregbesola. “If we don’t, we’ll be forced to admit severely sick inmates to hospital — and we’ll be even more in the tragic dilemma of choosing whether an inmate or somebody else gets a ventilator.” Decongestion of Correctional Centres which hold 75,000 Inmates in Nigeria is crucial. The Federal Government has again re-stated its commitment to decongesting all the correctional centres across the country, saying the purpose of setting up such centres was to rehabilitate, reform and reintegrate inmates back to the society.

The minister, at a meeting recently with the Attorney-General of the Federation, Abubakar Malami (SAN), the Chief Judge of the FCT, Ishaq Bello as well as the Comptroller-General of Corrections, Jaafaru Ahmed, resolved to prevail on President Muhammadu Buhari to urge governors to consider granting some of the inmates amnesty. He said under no circumstance should COVID-19 find its way into any of the centres. Ogbeni Aregbesola, according to a statement by the ministry’s Director of Press, Mohammed Manga, made the call during an emergency meeting held in his office in Abuja.

The meeting was on how to manage the custodial centres of the Nigerian Correctional Service (NCoS) during the COVID-19 pandemic. The minister said the meeting was conveyed in response to the outcome of the Presidential Task Force meeting on COVID-19, adding that the safety of inmates, officials of the Nigeria Correctional Service and all Nigerians was of great concern to the government. He said that the nation was in a terrible situation which required that all hands should be on deck to ensure that the pandemic did not spread to any of the custodial centres.

Aregbesola urged the Attorney-General of the Federation and Minister of Justice, chief judges, governors and other stakeholders in the justice sector to identify measures to be taken for quick decongestion of the custodial centres. Nigeria has 244 custodial centres, 139 of which were main custodial centres and 85 satellite centres with a total of 74,127 inmates, among which 1,450 were women, 21, 901 convicted and 52,226 awaiting trial. Malami has called for profiling of the inmates to have a joint arrangement with the governors and chief judges for speedy trial of awaiting trial inmates, which constitute the largest population at the custodial centres.

In United States and Italy, about 16 per cent of the prison population is aged over 50, while in the US federal system and Italy that proportion rises to 20 and 25 per cent, respectively. Prison populations have been ageing as a consequence of repeat offending and longer sentences, observers say. Medical experts say the only way to stymie an outbreak is to implement social distancing now by releasing prisoners to decrease their density in jails.

In Iran, authorities have recently released some 70,000 prisoners. Local authorities across the US, including in New York, California, and Ohio, have begun releasing inmates, focusing on pre-trial detainees, inmates nearing the end of their sentences, and the elderly and infirm.

Inmates in correctional centres are held in closed quarters where disease can spread quickly, prisoners are particularly vulnerable to the effects of the coronavirus pandemic sweeping the globe. Once inside jails, experts warn, the situation could rapidly spiral out of control. At least three positive cases have been confirmed in UK prisons and several dozen in US federal, state and local prisons and other European countries. Emergency coronavirus containment measures introduced in Italy sparked prison riots that left more than a dozen dead.

Rauf Aregbesola has urgently called for alternative measures of ensuring that overcrowded and understaffed correctional services centres do not become the source of the spread of the coronavirus. With more than 70 confirmed Covd-19 in Nigeria, the outbreak of the virus in the country has had the entire nation on high alert, and that correctional centres should also be urgently treated as a priority.

“It is simply not enough to stop visits to these centres when there have long before the outbreak been dire challenges that have seen the continuous stabbings and killing of officials without these issues being addressed.

“The situation in our correctional centres has long deteriorated, and new measures need to be considered.  “The coronavirus is an urgent matter that cannot be sorted out using long term plans and we are saying that the department must ensure that there are measures to ensure that prisoners are relocated to other facilities which might be in a better position to accommodate them.

“Those facilities will obviously not be correctional centres, but there should be facilities that could ensure that in the midst of this virus correctional officials and inmates do not become victims of this disease,” he said.

Minister wanted the department to come up with solutions that ensure that correctional centres become self sustainable because another challenge that arose was that there was no form of rehabilitation happening within the centres due to them being overcrowded and understaffed.

“There have been measures that we have suggested with the department such as when building new correctional centres they should be built within rural areas and they should not privatise them as has been the case,”. He added that the issue of re-offenders, which was up to 70%, that the department was currently faced with was due to the lack of rehabilitation as the re-offenders had not gained any form of skills that would sustain them beyond serving their terms behind bars.