Accra, July 2, GNA- POS Foundation, a facilitator for Justice for All Programme has petitioned President Nana Addo to consider offering amnesty for non-violent drug users and petty offenders as means of decongesting the country’s prisons in the midst of COVID-19 Pandemic.
In a statement signed by Jonathan Osei Owusu, Executive Director of POS Foundation and copied to the Ghana News Agency, said following the outbreak of the novel COVID-19, governments and non-state actors were tasked to provide responses to curtail its spread and mitigate its attendant impact on the entire population.
Whiles commending the President for granting presidential amnesty to 808 prisoners on March 26 this year, under Article 72 of the Constitution, the foundation urged him to review the amnesty criteria.
“The Foundation proposed the inclusion of convicted non- violent drug users (Not Trade/Trafficker) who are serving below 10 years from the Old PNDC Law 236 and petty offenders in order to decongest the prisons.”
The statement said “The POS foundation and its partners together with its donor agencies are willing to support the state for non-violent Drug users who may need treatment to go through a period of rehabilitation and treatment within the pardon process which is accordance with the New Narcotics Control Commission law 2020 and international best practices as they pose no major threat to society but to themselves.”
It further stated that across countries where COVID-19 has caused harm to human lives, prisons have been a substantial focus for its spread and the pandemic present a focus for reform.
“This have caused the release of many prisoners by many governments such as 381 in California, Iran 54,000, Afghanistan released 10,000 prisoners, Indonesia 30,000 and Ethiopia 4,011 prisoners.”
It will spread much more rapidly than in the general population due to the high congestion rate of 52 per cent and even as high as over 150 per cent in some prisons,” the statement recounted.
According to the statement as at January this year, the Nsawam Medium Security Prisons designed to hold 815 persons was housing over 3,459 prisoners.
“The Akuse Prison holds 207 against a design capacity of 60, while the Koforidua prisons also holds 633 as against a designed capacity of 300 per records from the Prison Service of Ghana,” the statement added.
The statement noted that Ghana’s Prisons could become epicenters of COVID-19 should there be an outbreak and to prevent that, the only practicable intervention “is the release of prisoners through an immediate review of the amnesty criteria/ presidential pardon under Article 72 (1).
According to POS Foundation, “this swift intervention is critical to protect the health and wellbeing of prisoners and ensure public safety.”
It further urged government to support the Ghana Prison Service with the necessary and protective tools for prison officers and visitors so the service could put in more strict precautionary measures to prevent imported cases of the virus into the prisons.
