A day’s sensitization workshop has been held on the Community Service Bill. The workshop which was under the auspices of the Legal Resources Center with support from USAID was held on Monday May 23, 2022. It brought together participants from both Public and Private Sector agencies in the Ketu South Municipality of the Volta region.
A Project Officer at the Legal Resources Centre (LRC), Rita Ama Nupe Demuyakor, said the Community Service Bill when passed into law by Parliament, would reduce the excess number of inmates in the country’s prisons.
The Bill will also ensure that offenders such as parents and benefactors sentenced would be able to carry out their punishments without being separated from their families for years as has been the case under the custodial sentencing system currently being practiced.
The Community Service Bill, which is an alternative to custodial sentence for convicted offenders in respect of certain types of offences, would see offenders rendering unpaid public work within a community and for its benefit for a period not exceeding the term of imprisonment for which the court had sentenced them.
Speaking to the Ghananewsonline.com.gh after the workshop, Rita Ama Nupe
said it was long overdue for the country to add on the non-custodial sentencing.
She said there are many disadvantages being faced due to the fact that the only form of punishment is custodial sentencing. She said anyone who commits an offence, a petty offence, young offenders, all go to prison and this suppresses the useful potentials in them to their community and the country.
She said because of the excess inmates, most prisoners are not able to get reformed and transformed as intended and that punishment is not only about causing harm to the offender, but could be a benefit to the community.
According to Ms Demuyakor, the situation has brought much burden on the tax payers’ money since the prisons which are expected to be housing and catering for inmates of 4,000 are now housing over 14,000 people.
She mentioned some advantages of the Bill to include the unpaid work offenders would render to the government, their community where the offence was committed and young people would not have to end their education because they have been sent to prison.
She said most people go to prison because there is no other form of sentencing and since the offenders are not reformed and society also fail to integrate the offenders, they are left with nothing than committing crimes to go back to prison.
She further called on the participants to advocate and send the message across the Ketu South District and elsewhere so as to push for the swift passage of the Community Service Bill by Parliament.
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By Hebrews Pouyeli Kumako || Ghananewsonline.com.gh