Mr. Justice George Acquah, a Supreme Court Judge, on Wednesday called for the establishment of a commission to study the country's criminal justice system (CJS) and to make recommendations for reforms in order to make the system more efficient.
He said: "Since this country obtained independence in 1957, the system has not undergone any review and assessment in respect with its physical and human resources for containing crime.
" ...Piecemeal review of the individual institutions would not ensure efficiency that the public demands from the system. Nothing does more damage to people's confidence in the CJS than a perception that criminals are getting away with crimes they commit," he observed.
Mr. Justice Acquah was delivering a lecture in Accra on the "The Challenge of Crime and Our Criminal Justice System -Which Way Forward?" to mark this year's "Martyrs Day." The lecture also focused on armed robbery, rape and sexual offences, spousal murders, child trafficking, traffic offences, cross border and economic crimes among others.
Mr. Justice Acquah said the rising crime wave, coupled with sophistication and advanced technology, required institutions involved in the dispensation of justice to upgrade technological infrastructure, train personnel in the use of devises and to make them to acquire skills to keep them abreast with the intricacies of offences. "Indeed the CJS appears to be taken unawares by the sheer sophistication and modernism involved in the planning and execution of some of the crimes," he said.
Mr. Justice Acquah noted that apart from the Police, which in criminal prosecutions worked under the Attorney General's Department, there were no institutions to assist agencies administering criminal justice to co-ordinate, review and assess their performance. He said the institutions had problems that effected capacity and competence in dealing with the crime.
Mr. Justice Acquah noted that the Attorney General's Department was understaffed, with some branches in the regions having only two lawyers each while some of the high courts were often denied legal assistance in tackling criminal matters brought before them. He said there was the need to re-appraise the operations of the courts to meet the current requirement to reduce delays, and to respond to criminality.
Mr. Justice Acquah bemoaned the lack of trade training, recreation, worship facilities and clinics and inadequate ventilation in the prisons. He said there were 11,000 inmates in the country's 35 prisons instead of the authorised number of 6700, giving rise to over-crowding making it difficult for the Prison Service to undertake classification of prisoners.
This, he said, had given rise to unsanitary conditions, poor feeding of inmates and indiscipline in the Service, with convicts coming out of prisons in worse conditions. Mr. Justice Acquah requested the authorities to revisit the adversarial system of justice because according to him it did not protect innocent persons against wrongful conviction.
He asked the public to have confidence in the Police and to report criminals to the personnel to facilitate their work. "Martyrs Day" was instituted by the Ghana Bar Association eight years ago, to remember the late Justices Sarkodie, Koranteng Addow and Agyepong and Major Sam Acquah (rtd) who were abducted, killed and their bodies burnt after the 1981 revolution. Mr. Peter Ala Adjetey, Speaker of Parliament, chaired the function.
