Gbarnga, Bong County – The Chief Justice of Liberia, Francis Kporkor, has urged judges and magistrates in Liberia to be lenient when passing sentences on accused persons.
Report by Selma Lomax, [email protected]
Chief Justice Kporkor made the appeal recently when he visited the Gbarnga Central prison. He said that imposing minimum sentences could change a convict positively instead of a maximum sentence which could harden him the more.
“Let the idea of your toughness be based on your firmness to do your job but not your firmness to impose maximum and excessive sentences,” Chief Justice Kporkor said.
Continuing, he added: “If you do that you will be tampering justice with mercy because the person standing trial will be wondering what kind of magistrate or judge you are.”
“As such, the person too will begin to have a change of heart on the offence that brought him before the court. So I am pleading that when you want to consider sentencing, be very magnanimous and merciful to suspects so that God will also be merciful to you.’’
Chief Justice Kporkor decried a situation where a suspect will be remanded in custody for more period than he would have stayed in prison if sentenced for the offence.
He appealed to the magistrates and judges to always consider bail application if an offence was bailable rather than remanding a suspect in prison custody.
He urged the jurists to also consider when a suspect was first remanded in prison custody before sentencing. “When you do that, the congestion will not be there and your work load will also reduce, so consider releasing suspects on bail in accordance with the law.’’
Will judges, Magistrates end prison congestion?
But prison congestion in Liberia seems to have defied all solutions. On a daily basis, human rights groups and stakeholders in the criminal justice system decry the state of prisons in the country and its attendant adverse effects on the economy, society and the inmates; and there seems to be no solution.
Although many recommendations have been made in the past on how to curb the menace, the call by the Chief Justice last week for magistrates and judges to curb congestion has, again, brought the issue to the front burner, according to pundits.
Many have argued that the situation, as depicted by statistics from prisons across the country, has defeated the very purpose of establishing prisons in any society, principal among which is to serve as a correctional facility for the betterment of the inmates and the society.
Besides the national scandal, prison overpopulation has led to the several incidents of jail breaks in many parts of the country with the attendant security risk as both convicted and detained prisoners often disappear without a trace.
Analysts believe that with overcrowded prisons, categorization of inmates will be difficult, forcing prison officials to bundle them together. This, they said, would put hardened criminals and first timers together, thus making reformation impossible.
Also, they are of the view that keeping the inmates in overcrowded cells with very poor quality food, poor ventilation and hygiene make them susceptible to various diseases.
Although some lawyers and magistrates in Bong County have supported the Chief Justice’s call, some said they alone cannot put an end to prison congestion. They insisted that the menace goes beyond building prisons since most inmates are awaiting trial.
To them, addressing the situation calls for all stakeholders – police, Ministry of Justice, lawyers, the courts and complainants – to live up to their responsibilities, so that trials will be conducted and completed in due time.
Lawyers: Prison congestion caused by justice actors
Some of the lawyers who spoke to FrontPage Africa said prison congestion is caused by the negligence of stakeholders in the criminal justice system.
‘‘Right now, it is the police that investigate and so, they are necessary witnesses. The police are a necessary witness but when the police exercise their administrative function of transfer of officers, they do not have regard for their obligations on matters pending in court,” a lawyer told FrontPage Africa.
‘‘So, when they transfer them from one place to the other, provisions are not made for them to come back and conclude the cases they are witnesses in, which are pending in court.
‘‘There is the problem of the inefficiency of the police system; the prison authority’s challenges in moving inmates to prisons; frequent adjournments of cases to suit lawyers, who have limitless reasons to call for adjournment without consideration for the prison authorities, as well as members of the public, who are witnesses but do not show up in courts because they do not appreciate their civic responsibility,” a lawyer continued.
One lawyer told our reporter: ‘‘there is also the problem of judges and magistrates, who are at liberty to decide when to sit on certain matters. They also have many conferences and seminars to attend and Liberia has many holidays. So, all these issues put together are responsible for congestion.”