Jailing of "wee" smokers congesting prisons - Interior Minister

Ghana’s Interior Minister says caging "wee" smokers for long remand terms contributes to the congestion in the country’s prisons.

He believes such suspects should be given non-custodial sentences as part of measures toward decongesting the prisons.

“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”, Mark Woyongo said when he addressed an audience of inmates and prison officers in the Upper East Region Thursday.

He also described as “unfair”, the practice of caging crime suspects on remand for more than five years. Such remand inmates deserve their freedom, Woyongo said.

“If you are in prison for five years and they have not been able to finish your case, they should release you”, Woyongo told his audience.

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

“In the next few weeks the Interior Ministry is going to have a stakeholders’ conference to collect suggestions as to how we can reform our laws to make provisions for non-custodial sentences”, Woyongo revealed.

The Minister believes adopting non-custodial methods of punishing criminals will held help “decongest the prisons”.