Decriminalize Petty Offenses – CSO Advocates

A civil society organization, Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative is advocating for the decriminalization of petty offences such as minor theft, unlawful entry among other offences.

Some civil society organizations have criticized the country’s criminal justice system for handing down hefty punishments for petty offenders.

Speaking at a program to validate a research report on petty offences in Ghana, a lecturer at the GIMPA Law School, Edmund Amarkwei Foley, urged stakeholders of Ghana’s judicial system to consider alternative ways of dealing with such offences.

“The key recommendations are that Ghana should begin to consider the decriminalization of certain offences, principally, petty offenses or the declassification of those offenses. By that we mean to reduce them from maybe felonies to misdemeanors or just consider them as minor offenses.”

“The second key recommendation for us is for government to begin the process of reforming the criminal offenses act, and key stakeholders in the security services, judiciary and legal profession hadn’t given much thought to petty offenses in our statutes books. As you heard from the research, we don’t even have a definition of what petty offenses are, but we recognize that they are certain offenses that really should not attract as much attention from the justice system as there are now,” he added.

Help decongest prisons

Former Chief Justice, Georgina Theodora Wood in February 2015 urged judges to help decongest the country’s prisons through their sentencing.

“Our prisons are overcrowded. Human rights advocates are worried about the treatment meted out to both convicted prisoners and accused persons on remand but building bigger and better prisons cannot be the answer or solution to the persistent complaint of overcrowding,” she stated.

A lot of human right activists have complained about the overcrowding nature of prisons in the country partly attributing it to the number of years handed over to people who commit petty crimes.

Ghana as at 2015 had 43 prison facilities, and according to reports, 28 were said to be overcrowded by as much as 358%.

Source: Citifmonline