Winston Churchill once said that a civilization could be judged by the way it treated its prisoners. Going by this standard, Ghana's civilisation is still Byzantium. Today, a prison in Ghana that is seen as not overcrowded can be one that has ten people instead of four in a cell.

The situation is even worse with remand prisoners in either police custody or remand facilities under the Prison Service. The huge prison population is undermining any good work the prison service may be trying to do in terms of making the prison experience constructive for the majority prisoners. 

Go to any typical police cells, men and women suspects are banged up together. Young offenders and hardened criminals share a floor. There are people in police cells in Kumasi, for example, who have spent seven years on remand there!

Overcrowding is placing extreme pressure on Ghana"s penal facilities. An increasing inmate population, coupled with real declines in penal spending over the last few decades, have resulted in prison overcrowding which quite often exceeds the facility’s maximum capacity by at least three-fold.

On January 21st 1950, Nkrumah and other leading CPP members including Kojo Botsio and K A Gbedemah were imprisoned at the James Fort Prison, Accra, on charges arising from pursuing what was termed as "Positive Action" against the colonial government. One would have expected that the facility built four centuries ago would today be a museum. No, James Fort Remand Prison houses over a thousand inmates.

Prison overcrowding has many negative effects upon inmates and upon society, as a whole. Research has demonstrated that prison overcrowding creates violent competition for limited resources, aggression, higher rates of illness, increased likelihood of recidivism and re-offending. When you dehumanise people in confined areas you are only breeding them to take it out on society when you finally let them loose.

Our over-run prison conditions are not only degrading and dehumanizing for inmates, they are counterproductive to society’s own quest for security, law and order. Ghana’s penal culture must change from one of merely punishment to one of correctional reforms, which emphasise maximising the opportunities available to inmates.

Various research works indicate that the prison environment is characterised by factors which can have adverse effects on individual inmates. One such research showed that in the prison setting crowded conditions are chronic, people prone to anti-social behaviour are gathered, there is an absence of personal control and idleness and boredom can be prevalent.

Research has indicated that overcrowding has three types of effects on the daily prison environment. First, there is less of everything to go around, so the same space and resources are made to stretch even further. The opportunities for inmates to participate in self-improvement and rehabilitative programs, such as academic, employment and vocational training are curtailed. The lack of work or work opportunities lead to inmate idleness, often reinforcing the maxim that idleness breeds discontent and disruptive behaviour.

The government must begin to factor in its penal policy the various methods available to help reduce prison overcrowding. Among the more influential are building more prisions, enhancing prison design and reducing the prison population by developing community based alternatives to incarceration.

It would be an insult to victims if perpetrators of serious violent crime were punished with leniency, not to mention the threat to pubic safety. This would not provide any rehabilitation let alone be a deterrent. But, the fact is that our prisons are full of people who ought not be there. Sentencing a first time offender nursing mother to 4 years for stealing may end up causing more harm to society than cure.

Most of the causes of prison overcrowding occur outside the administration and jurisdiction of the Prison Service and these complex issues and problems cannot be addressed by a single state agency. The exercise to reform the sentencing regime is a good start. The other exercise to decongest prisons by granting bail to those who have been unreasonably detained for years without any sign of a case against them is also in the right direction.

Yet, the pace is too slow to make any significant difference unless the state sees it as a priority area. It is more costly to make our prisons a college for criminal excellence.