Prison overcrowding trend in Nigeria and policy implications on health

Abstract

In recent years, one of the major challenges confronting the Nigerian Prisons is the problem of overcrowding. The problem has snowballed into various dimensions such as poor feeding, dilapidated structures and unhygienic environment affecting the health of the inmates. This has been a major concern which was bore out of a general problem of overcrowding. The study looked into the problem of overcrowding not just as a gap within the Nigerian Criminal Justice system but rather as policy implementation default. The study made use of secondary data sourced from the Nigeria Bureau of Statistics on prison capacity and total lock-up within the years 2011–2016. Over the years examined, the article concentrated on the prison capacity and lock-up for the six years with the view to understanding other underlining factors that could account for overcrowding in the prisons. The study attributed the cause of overcrowding in the Nigeria Prisons to major policy default in implementation of increase in prison capacity syndrome. Southern Nigeria even though reduced in population and prison capacity compared to the Northern Nigeria, accounts for 55% of the lock-up as at 2016. Also, Northern Nigeria Prison is 3% overcrowded while the Southern Prisons is 81% overcrowded as at 2016. It therefore behooves of the Government to implement policies on prison capacity increase based on crime rate in each of the zones.

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