A one-day sensitisation workshop for key stakeholders on community sentencing in Ghana has taken place at Takoradi in the Western Region.

The key stakeholders are traditional authority, assembly members, Civil Society Organisations (CSOs), People with Disabilities (PWDs), the legal department, and the security agencies among others.

The main objective was to seek their views on community sentencing as a better correctional method compared with custodial sentencing.

The Paralegal and Education Officer at the Sekondi Prisons, Superintendent of Prisons), Mr. Ibrahim Yakubu, in his delivery said the prisons were correctional places but not a place of punishment as some people thought.

He said the prisons rather consumed without producing anything and the amount spent on each prisoner was woefully inadequate therefore community sentencing would reduce government expenditure in prisons in the country.

He said if community sentencing became part of the law and implemented, it would decongest the prisons and money which was spent on prisoners would be channelled into other development projects.

He said the prisons did not have enough equipment like sewing machines, machines for making footwear, dryers for hairdressers among others, so if the number in the prisons were reduced, the few machines available would pave the way for active and proper learning teaching at the skills training workshops for inmates.

Supt. Yakubu admitted that the prisons in Ghana were overcrowded because minor and less risky offenders were given custodial sentences with few fine payment options unlike countries like Rwanda, Burkina Faso and others where minor cases were given community sentence.

He said it was long overdue for Ghana to consider passing laws to include Non-custodial sentencing to community sentencing in the justice delivery systemin order to decongest the already overcrowded prisons.

A Director at the Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative (CHRI), Africa Office, Miss Mina Mensah, said there were many advantages because a convict would work in his or her own community and the young convicts would would not stop their education because they could work and still go to school.

She noted that people went to prison because there was no other means of sentencing and the society did not allow any integration so convicts were forced to go back to commit crimes in order to remain in prison.

The Programme Manager of CHRI, Madam Esther Poku-Atuahene said the Community Service Bill was a better alternative to custodial sentencing because it would benefit the community and the nation at large.

She mentioned cleaning, collection of rubbish, redecorating community spaces where the community used as public gathering areas as some of community sentencing.#

From Peter Gbambila, Takoradi