- Expert lists causes of recidivism, proffer solutions
Stakeholders have raised concern over worsening recidivism in Nigeria as many ex-offenders return to higher crimes after serving jail terms.
They questioned the reformation and rehabilitation mandate of the Nigerian Correctional Service, lamenting that recent arrests by security agencies across the country have shown that former convicts who have finished serving jail terms easily find their ways back to crimes.
Hardly would the police and other security agencies arrest suspected criminals without having those who had served prison terms for more than once.
Last week, the Federal Capital Territory Police Command arrested and paraded over 20 suspects for robbery, kidnapping and other crimes, about seven of whom had spent imprisonment terms in correctional centres.
Three of the suspects narrated how they planned their robbery operations while serving their imprisonment terms.
Few weeks after they were released from prison, the suspects got connected and executed their criminal acts by robbing residents within the Abuja metropolis.
However, luck ran out of them again as FCT police command arrested and paraded them for armed robbery.
“I met him (another ex-convict) in prison and we became friends. We were in the same cell and we used to discuss how we will make money after we leave the cell. A week after he left prison, I was also released and that was how we started our operations,” Ndukwake, one of the suspects paraded by the FCT Commissioner of Police, Olatunji Disu said during an interview with journalists.
In the same vein, Osun State Security Network Agency, also known as Amotekun Corps, recently paraded some suspects for fraud and armed robbery.
The Amotekun Corps Commander, Isaac Omoyele disclosed that four of the seven suspects are ex-convicts, adding that they robbed Point of Sales operators in Osun State.
They are Musbau Saheed Ganiyu, Afeez Ayuba, Awal Adebayo and Ilerioluwa Nurudeen.
Omoyele was disturbed at the growing rate of involvement of former convicts in crimes, wondering about the manner of reformation and rehabilitation that the NCoS offers to inmates.
“I don’t know how the Correctional Centre will be reforming all these people (suspects) because by going there (prisons) and coming back, they are not reformed,” a feasibly angry Omoyele said while parading the suspects.
He promised to follow-up with the prosecution of the suspects to ensure that they were not released without due sanctions.
“I will follow the prosecution and know where it will end,” the Amotekun boss said.
Also, a former Commissioner of Police in Lagos State, Idowu Owohunwa, who is now an Assistant Inspector General of Police had bemoaned hardened tendencies of ex-convicts, suggesting that Correctional Centre authorities are not doing enough to transform inmates in line with their mandate.
The police boss while parading three murder suspects who are former convicts last year, had said Nigerian prisons had become a training ground for hardened criminals and the reproduction of criminal gangs threatening the society’s peace.
In October this year, The Point had reported how a Magistrate’s Court sitting in Osogbo sentenced a 22-year-old awaiting trial inmate, Ojo Adewale, to five years imprisonment with hard labour for stealing a mobile phone belonging to one of the warders of the Ilesa Medium Correctional Centre in Osun State.
Adewale who is standing trial for a case of theft before the court had been remanded in the correctional facility after he was not able to meet his bail conditions.
He was earlier arraigned in court by the police in the state for allegedly stealing some work tools at a mechanic shop in Osogbo while acting as a scavenger.
However, after spending about six months in the correctional facility awaiting trial over the case of stealing, Adewale was brought to court recently to continue his trial but he incurred the wrath of the court by stealing a phone of one of the warders that brought him to court.
Magistrate A. O. Odeleye who convicted Adewale after finding him guilty expressed shock at the gut of the inmate and described him as having “depraved mind and very corrupt.”
Recidivism is when a person relapses into criminal behaviour, often after the person has received sanction or undergone interventions for a previous crime.
Recidivism encompasses re-arrest, resistance to rehabilitation, re-conviction, re-offending, re-admission, reincarceration, and repetitious criminal tendency, among others.
Until August 2019, the NCoS was named the Nigeria Prison Service. It was rechristened to underscore its mandate to reform and rehabilitate offenders to become better citizens.
Aside from being mandated statutorily to take into custody, legally interned persons, NCoS is expected to “identify the causes of their anti-social disposition, set in motion mechanisms for their training and reform, to return them to the society as law-abiding citizens…’’
Even though Nigeria prisons offer vocational classes which are avenues for inmates to learn new or upgrade their skills, most inmates find it difficult embracing legitimate means of survival.
Revealing why correctional centres appear to churn out recidivists, a Nigerian non-governmental organisation which promotes social justice and provide legal aids for people in prison and helps those who have survived prison to reintegrate into the community, Anchor Heritage Initiative, identified lack of appropriate reformation and rehabilitation programmes suitable for addressing the offending behaviour of inmates while in custody.
The Chief Executive Officer of the organisation, Bidemi Oladipupo, in an interview with The Point, also blamed some ex-offenders for not willing to be reformed.
“It is not everyone that says I go to the church that goes to the church, it is actually not everyone that is saved, neither it is everyone that is a changed person. Even though we definitely can’t compare the two, why I am saying that is that even when you are being called to that change, there needs to be a decision within your mind. So, I always don’t want to completely blame it on the system, saying that the Correctional system is not working because the truth is that there are still people that come out of this correctional system that later go inwards and come out better.
“So, that place of self-determination is very necessary. Where that person decides, I want to change. My going to church today is that I want to completely give my life, I want to change my ways. You know we are in a world where people easily pick up vices, there are so many vices going on and it takes that place of self-determination and self-recovery to be able to say this is where I want to start and this is how and what I want to be.
“Now, breaking it down to the Correctional system, if we have that at the bedrock of our mind, knowing full well that it behooves on that person to make self-discipline, self-determination, then, we can now talk of opportunities and facilities for that person that is ready to be corrected.
“I can’t tell you plainly that yes; everything is already set there, especially for custodial centres that are outside Lagos. You know Lagos is an economic hub, I have visited other custodial centers in the South West, yes, some correctional activities are also happening outside Lagos, but you can’t compare with the kind of activities that you have in Lagos.
“You have National Open University, you have fish farming, you have agricultural farming, you have shoe workshops. Another colleague of mine just finished production of school uniforms and they were all produced by inmates in Kirikiri Medium Custodial Centre. If you see their finished product, the uniform that would be used by the boys in Oregun Correctional Home, you will not believe it is from prison. So, we have a tailoring workshop there. We have the IT hub that was powered by Anchor Heritage Initiative. That IT hub is growing large. If you see what an inmate was doing on the internet, you will be amazed.
“We also have NOUN in Kirikiri maximum, medium and Ikoyi but are you ready to take the opportunity? While I can agree with you that it may not be as robust and as available in all other custodial centres, but the little that is available, can you take it? There is a guy that experienced a jail term in Ilesa Correctional Centre and he learned tailoring in the facility, when he finished, he enrolled in our aftercare initiative and he learnt more for six months with an expert in Lagos, and his tailoring institute is now in Osogbo. He is doing well, he is sowing designers and he is even training students.
“Is there a willingness to change among the inmates before we now go to the facilities? Are there many opportunities, no, we are not yet there. Even in Lagos that we have many opportunities, we still have recidivism, we still have people leaving and coming back. They didn’t take advantage of that reformation. But we cannot compare it to other custodial centres, we still have a long way to go as regards the correctional service idea. But the truth is that we are not where we used to be,” the expert said.
Oladipupo, whose NGO had secured the release of 398 inmates convicted for various crimes in the last seven years, called on the leadership of NCoS to intensify efforts in its reformation policies and ideas as means of tackling recidivism.
He said, “The service needs to intensify more on reformation and on correctional service activities like things that will engage the inmates.
The national leadership of the Correctional Centre should liaise with relevant NGOs to ensure that inmates compulsorily engage in one programme or the other such as tech, artisanal works, computer, before completing their terms. Even though we don’t shy away from the fact that you can take a horse to the river but you cannot force it to drink.”
Oladipupo also underscored the merits in the non-custodial measures provided for by the NCoS Act of 2019, urging the judiciary, NCoS and other relevant bodies to embrace non-custodial sanctions such as parole, community, restorative justice, fines, suspended sentences and any other measure with the aim of effecting room for repentance by convicted offenders.
“As a stakeholder, I still look forward to when we will look more into non-custodial sentencing. We need to look into this so that we won’t be fixing people that are not criminally minded with the actual ones.
The 2019 Correctional Service Act, Section 37 to 44 talks about the non-custodial measures and the classes of offences that should be under the non-custodial. I just think we can encourage and look into that more. It is an alternative to being in prison,” he stated.
When contacted on the telephone, Umar Abubakar, the public relations officer of NCoS, promised to get back to our reporter for reaction but he failed.
He did not also reply to messages that were sent to him.
