The Justice For All program, (JFA), an initiative of the Judicial Service of Ghana aimed at alleviating prison overcrowding through setting up special courts to adjudicate remand prisoner cases in prisons have set free 18 remand prisoners in the Ho Central Prisons.
The eighteen remand prisoners were in custody for various offences mostly murder, possession of narcotics and rape.
The special sitting of the JFA was attended by the soon-to-retire Chief Justice of the Republic, Justice Sophia Akuffo, in the company of twenty-one (21) female Ambassadors who are serving in Ghana.
Some eighteen (18) remand prisoners in the Ho Central Prisons have been set free by the Justice For All (JFA) program at its sitting on November 29, 2019.
Outcome of JFA Sitting
In all, a total of 27 remand prisoners including the 18 who were freed had their cases heard by the Justice For All Court that sat at the Ho Central Prisons. Two (2) were discharged unconditionally, and fourteen (14) were granted bail. A total of eight (8) applications were refused and one (1) application was struck out by the Court and two applicants were convicted on their own plea and bonded to be of good behavior.
Chief Justice Sophia Akuffo, in her address to the Ambassadors who accompanied her to the JFA sitting indicated that beginning from January 2020, the Justice For All programme will be decentralized to allow all the sixteen regions in Ghana to take charge of the Programme under the supervision of Justice Clemence Honyenuga, the Justice of the Court of Appeal responsible for the program.
“One of the things that will be happening in January is the decentralization of the Justice For All program so that it becomes the responsibility of the Supervising High Court Judge of each region. At least every quarter, every region must have a Justice For All programme” the Lady Chief Justice said.
The Danish Ambassador to Ghana, Tove Degnbol, who championed the initiative to get female Ambassadors serving in Ghana to visit the Prisons in a brief remark indicated that the Justice For All programme is just one step to actually solving the challenges of the country’s prison system.
The introduction of the Alternative Sentencing Bill which is yet to be passed into law, the Ambassador said will hopefully help address the conjection problems in Ghanaian prisons more holistically.
The Ho Central Prison
The Ho Central prison as at November 29, 2019 had a total of 374 convicted male prisoners and seven (7) female convicts. Ten. (10) inmates are Lodgers, while twenty four (24) are trial prisoners. A total of ninty (90) male inmates are on remand as against two (2) females also on remand. In all the Ho Central prison which was originally built for one hundred and sixty (160) inmates currently has a total of 499 male inmates and nine (9) female, bring the total figure to 508.
POS Foundation, a non profit organization, plays a pivotal role in ensuring that the cases of remand prisoners are properly aggregated for hearing by the Justice For All Court.
Story filed by Naomi Komeh
