The Minister for the Interior, Muntaka Mohammed-Mubarak, has expressed serious concern about the widespread abuse of remand procedures by the police and the courts.
He noted that in many cases, bail conditions set by the courts are excessively harsh, making it nearly impossible for accused persons to fulfil them.
Speaking on the floor of Parliament on Thursday, May 28, Mr Muntaka stated that the passage of the Community Service Bill, alongside ongoing constitutional amendments, would help reduce the overuse of remand and ease overcrowding in prisons and police cells.
“I’ve been working with the Minister of Justice and Attorney General, Dr. Dominic Ayine, on the constitutional amendment that is currently ongoing, that we should make remand very restrictive because currently it is massively abused. With the least provocation, they say they’ve remanded somebody. You go to the police, and they remand people anyhow,” he said.
He added: “Sometimes they give terrible bail conditions that people are not able to meet. We want to take the opportunity in this constitutional amendment to restrict this unnecessary remand. I’m sure that if we’re able to get these three things working together, it is going to help us to decongest our prisons and also ourselves and make life a little better.”
Mr Muntaka also disclosed that the government spends approximately GH¢40 million annually on feeding prison inmates, describing the amount as woefully inadequate.
Editor:
Obiri-Yeboah
