Prisoners should be allowed to use GSM – Criminologist

Do we need to build more prisons?We have too many prisons. It is not necessarily in terms of the number. We have 250 plus prison yards but we don’t have the proper structure for these prisons. Prison is like a stomach, the more you build the more you need. Rather than build more prisons we […]

Do we need to build more prisons?
We have too many prisons. It is not necessarily in terms of the number. We have 250 plus prison yards but we don’t have the proper structure for these prisons. Prison is like a stomach, the more you build the more you need. Rather than build more prisons we should have proper prison structures. The problem is the proportion of convicted inmates to the awaiting trial inmates, because the needs of the two are different. Oftentimes we mix up our prisoners but we need to stop people from going to prison.
Should prison inmates be allowed to use GSM phone in prison?
Prison inmates everywhere should be allowed to use phone. It is their right to have communication but you need to do it in a very sensible manner and it can be used as an incentive. You can say that a low risk inmate is entitled to one phone call per week and he will earn it  in terms of saying that if they are of good behaviour you can speak to your family for 5 -10 minutes which is recorded. You know it is your right but you are told if you violate any prison rules this is one of the punishment. This helps in rehabilitation. Imagine they have no contact with their families, before you know it they have broken homes. Complete dissociation brings a lot of problems. Don’t ever forget that some of these people may be innocent.
There are three categories of those you find in prison – those that are innocent, those who have committed minor offences and those who committed the offence and require to have the punishment. For these categories you should have a structure for them. The truth is that nobody can ever stop prison inmates from making contacts, so it should be made available not arbitrarily so that it does not encourage corruption and abuses.
In many countries and jurisdictions prisoners are allowed to use phones but those phones have to be used in a manner that enables you maintain security and collect intelligence. The way we are doing it we are losing a lot of vital intelligence information.
It has been alleged that some female prisoners get pregnant and give birth in the prison. What is your reaction?
There are so many instances where you find a prisoner leaving the prison. For instance the awaiting trial inmates are often taken to court; in terms of convicted inmates, some are also taken out for work gang. This is when you can see prisoners being taken out to work in a farm but usually women are not sent out for that.
There is only one exclusive female prison in Nigeria. Which is the Kirikiri female prison that is managed by female officers? For other prisons that have females, we have only a section of the prison with a different gate which looks like a semi prison. So you enter into the prison and go into the female wing. Usually it is only females and never a man who works and heads that small unit inside the prison, but with additional security.
There are risks in such a setting for instance we have had a jail break in such a setting in a state. What happened was that the fleeing prisoners broke through the female wing, raped the female inmates including the officials, so you see the vulnerability of having a female unit within a male prison, which happens in a lot of cases.
The bulk of the persons we have in prisons are awaiting trial including women who are about 2 per cent of the inmates and they must be in the states where their cases are going on.
Under normal circumstances a female prisoner should not be impregnated in the prison and when that happens it means that there are things that happened that ought not to have happened. In terms of ensuring that it is the women that man the female prison. If women are brought out they are also escorted and additional measures are taken to secure them away from the men, but that does not reduce the vulnerability in case of riot or jail break. But it is not abnormal to see a female prisoner pregnant, if the person was pregnant before she entered the prison. That you find somebody have babies in prison does not mean that something wrong happened. You need to first calculate how long she had been in prison and whether there had been any instance when she had gone out of prison whether to the court.
The procedure does not allow prison warders to impregnate female inmates except something went wrong. Where it happens, it is important to do a proper investigation.
Where a female prisoner comes into prison with maybe a two months old pregnancy and gives birth, how do we guarantee the safety and future of the child?
When someone comes in and she is pregnant, prison of course is not the best place to raise a child, but it happens and the prison authorities do not have the authority to release anybody except the court. Prisons have such instances and they have to cope and provide the good things such woman needs – antenatal care. It is advocated that such babies should be had outside the prison. When you have the baby, you also need proper facility and care, in terms of space and all the proper things not only for the child but also for the mother. As the child grows it also has requirements – nursery.
In practice, normally the prison service would count the number of inmates in that prison and increase the food ration. Some prison officers out of kindness would provide things like sanitary and baby food items; sometimes you see NGOs doing that and sometimes faith-based organisations do that. So, certain things negatively affect a child that is brought up in prison. Again sometimes even when the prison authorities are asking the family members to come and take the baby they will not come, so the question whether to move the baby to a social welfare department will become a different issue.
The total number of inmates in 2013, according to prison statistics, was about 55,173 of this number males accounted for 54,151, for females we had 1,022.
The fact that you are detaining a woman brings with it special problems. The imprisonment of a woman does not equate the imprisonment of a man. If you imprison a man you are restricting his movement and freedom, the same you do for a woman but beyond that you may actually be making more restrictions in terms of determination of her ability to ever reproduce. If you remember that at a certain age women can no longer reproduce.
Do you support the exchange of Boko Haram prisoners for the release of the Chibok schoolgirls?
Every behaviour tends to follows the pattern of what re-enforces it. You can have positive behaviour and the condition that enforces it and negative behaviour and the condition that enforces it. When a child fails an examination and you give him a gift, you send a signal not only for the child but also to other children that it is really alright to fail an examination. That is applicable to every behaviour. There are certain steps you take and you open a cankerworm. More Chibok girls would be taken in the future and they will say to you exchange for us the leaders of Boko Haram. It’s a very sensitive issue that we need to look at carefully. You need to ask yourself “how much can you negotiate with the devil?” We need to make every effort to get the Chibok girls back and make sure it does not occur again but the truth is that every decision must be taken with the sense of responsibility of what will prevent more recurrence.
It is a practice to move any convicted prisoner and the Comptroller General of Prisons has the power to move prisoners within the country. The challenge is that the awaiting trial who must be kept close to where he/she must be presented in court. The comptrollers of a particular prison also have power to move prisoners within that prison whether medium or maximum. However you must ensure that the prison has the required security to hold the inmates when it comes to category of the prison – whether maximum or medium.
Was there any danger in the transfer of Boko Haram prisoners to Anambra State?
Basically, security information about where high risk prisoners are transferred should not be made public any more, it is a security risk. On the issue of transfer and sensibility to the menace, people know that the attacks are only restricted to the north eastern part of Nigeria and nobody would want to do something that would encourage the spread. We are aware that certain places have been attacked because persons are kept in those locations. So it is a security risk where Boko Haram prisoners are kept to be made open. The information should have been kept secret.