ABUJA – The Catholic Bishop of Sokoto Diocese, Most Rev. Mathew Hassan Kukah, on Thursday in Abuja proposed the use of noncustodial sentence for lesser crimes in order to decongest the nation’s prisons.
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Kukah told the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) that noncustodial punishments would also enable the [pro_ad_display_adzone id=”10″]Federal Government to redirect revenue spent on maintaining the prisons and the inmates.
“ A lot of the sentences passed in the court of law can be resolved using noncustodial punishments [pro_ad_display_adzone id=”10″]because it is costing the government a lot of money to maintain prisoners.
He said that there were a lot of noncustodial alternatives to justice like community labour, adding that[pro_ad_display_adzone id=”10″] this would enable them to serve their communities while also learning some skills.
According to Kukah, sending youths to prison especially on lesser crimes, does not benefit them or the society because they are at their most productive age and being in prison exposes them to learn more crime.
” What is the use of keeping so many young people at their most productive ages in prison and then in the course of their interactions they learn and get into greater crimes.
“Some of the people in prison now were picked up on the road and immediately charged with vagrancy or other crimes and sent to prison.
” This kind of people go to the prison and meet drug addicts and before they come out they may already be planning to commit greater crimes,” Kukah said.
The cleric, therefore, advocated that crimes which were not of grievous nature should be given noncustodial punishments rather than prison sentence.
He supported the directive banning use of mobile phones in prisons nationwide, but said that it should not be completely eliminated to enable prisoners communicate with relatives and friends.
Kukah said that this could be allowed but with close monitoring as obtained in the international community.
“It is dangerous to allow mobile phones or private phones in the prisons but that does not mean prisoners cannot be allowed to communicate to the outside world.
” In most international communities you see that prisoners are allowed to use phones made available by the prison but even this is closely monitored because there is no crime that cannot be organised using phones,” he said. (NAN)