The Member of Parliament for Madina Counstituency in the Greater Accra, Francis-Xavier Sosu, has said the criminal laws in Ghana need a critical reassessment.
According to the human rights lawyer, the review is needed to build a free, open, accountable and a non-discriminatory society for all Ghanaians regardless of one’s socio-economic status.
“Ghana must take steps to make its criminal justice system fairer and more equitable where every Ghanaian can have justice irrespective of their economic status. We must reform to conform to international principles and standards.
“Ghana’s criminal laws need urgent review. There is the need to review our laws to ensure that petty or minor offences will no longer attract custodial sentences but rather communal labour, as many Ghanaians do not want shame and embarrassment,” he said in statement.
Petty offences, according to the African Commission on Human and People’s Rights, are minor offences for which the punishment is prescribed by law to carry a warning, community service, a low-value fine or short term of imprisonment, often for failure to pay the fine.
Examples include being a vagabond, an idle or disorderly person, loitering, begging, being a vagrant, failure to pay debts, being a common nuisance and disobedience to parents; causing a public nuisance and hawking and vending, urinating in public and washing clothes in public and laws criminalising informal commercial activities, such as hawking and vending.
But, according to Lawyer Francis-Xavier Sosu, Ghana has failed its tale of the criminal justice system and has therefore make the ordinary Ghanaian furious towards “the justice system stems from a sense of unfairness and injustice.”
“The ordinary Ghanaian cannot come to terms with the fact that a politician or people of influence in society can steal millions of Ghana cedis and yet can be made to refund those monies or left to go free when a struggling ‘trotro’ driver is made to serve custodial prison terms for inability to pay fines for road offences”
“A hungry man who steals plantain to care for his family may also go to prison with the current state of our laws by which crimes are not classified. Such a person may serve prison terms while others who steal large sums of money in public service are only made to refund even after auditor general’s report indicts them” he chastised.
He said the Criminal and other Offences Act, 1960 (Act 29), must also have a second look because most of other petty crimes contained in the Act has attributed to what he described as a “colonial baggage.”
The Deputy Ranking Member of the Constitutional, Legal and Parliamentary Affairs Committee, is however, demanding for a holistic approach to address loopholes in the criminal laws.
“It is essential that there is expansion of the Justice for All and Alternative Dispute Resolutions Programmes, encouragement of plea bargaining, and resourcing of Legal Aid Commission in order to address the inefficiencies and bottlenecks in Ghana’s Justice Delivery System” Xavier Sosu highlighted.
