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Home » Embrace community service in punishing convicts, lawyers tell judges

Embrace community service in punishing convicts, lawyers tell judges

by Totori News

Some lawyers have urged Nigerian judges to embrace more community service in punishing convicts, where applicable, instead of imprisonment so as to decongest the courts and encourage restorative justice.


The lawyers spoke with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Lagos on Sunday.
According to the legal practitioners, such measure would allow the community as secondary victim indirectly injured by crime to benefit from the punishment of convicts.


Mr. Nnamabia Charles, a lawyer, and mediator, said that the country’s judiciary was yet to take full advantages of community service as opposed to imprisonment.


He said that first time minor crime offenders who pleaded guilty to crimes could be placed where their skills and interests could be maximized for the benefit of the community.


He stated that the prisons were already at maximum capacity and in this era of COVID-19 pandemic, reducing the prisons’ population would reduce the risk of transmitting the virus.

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Charles added that a reduction in the number of convicts in jail would also save the government a lot of money in the long run.


“Community service provides for a less expensive punishment as compared to imprisonment; more prisoners mean more food and security which in turn increases the cost of running the prisons,” he said.


Mrs. Chizaram Julius, a constitutional lawyer, said that the convicts were more likely to rehabilitate themselves while performing community service, which should be the focus of our criminal justice system.


She urged the judiciary to pay more attention to restorative justice as opposed to retributive justice which is the paramount focus of imprisonment.


“When we send these first time minor crime offenders to prison, they stand a risk of getting negatively influenced by convicts who had committed more grievous crimes.


“The possibility of these citizens to come out of prison worse off and commit more grievous crimes are higher off than if they are made to work off their crimes in lacking areas of our communities,” Julius said.

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On his part, Mr. John Bulus, a criminal lawyer, however, encouraged the judiciary to decongest the prisons by embracing more community service punishments only where the possibility of the convicts reoffending was low.


He said that psychological profiles could be done on them to ascertain if they were ready to embrace rehabilitation and that the service meted out should be tailored to the offender and not the offence.


“The relationship between the offence and the sentencing would encourage proper rehabilitation.


“It could be sanitation wise, farming, a lawyer could even be made to offer pro bono legal services and other professionals could help in other lacking government functions,” he said.

(NAN)

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