Minor offenders deserve community service - Woyongo

Interior minister Mark Woyongo has reignited the debate over the need for the country to consider non-custodial sentence for minor offences.

According to him, it is unfair for an offender to be given a long jail term for possessing a “simple wrap of Indian hemp”.

"In Ghana today you are found with one wrapper of Indian hemp and they put you here for one year six months and thereabout instead of just asking you to go to the assembly and to do some weeding and say good bye," the former defense minister noted.

Addressing prisoners and prison authorities in the Upper East, Thursday, the minister said he will begin to push for remand prisoners who have served more than five years to be freed.

"If you are in prison for five years and they have not been able to finish your case, they should release you.

"You don't keep somebody on remand for four years or five years. How about if at the end of the years he is not proven guilty. I think it is not fair," he said.