The Director for Public Prosecutions at the Ministry of Justice and Attorney General’s Department, Yvonne Atakora Obuobisa has made a strong case for the removal of vagrancy laws in the 1992 Constitution.
While adding her voice to growing calls for decriminalizing vagrancy laws, Madam Obuobisa reiterated that the state should be interested in creating a stronger social protection system for vulnerable groups.
Besides, she stated the current vagrancy laws in our statutory books criminalize certain actions of vagrants as opposed to specific criminal acts.
“The underlying cause of vagrancy is poverty, the law does not look at this. All the law is interested in is, has the person committed an offence or not,” Mrs. Atakora Obuobisa said during a courtesy to her office by a human rights based NGO, Crime Check Foundation (CCF).
The Director of Public Prosecution’s call came a few weeks after the Commissioner of Commission for Humans Rights And Administrative Justice (CHRAJ), Joseph Whittal also made a case for the removal of such laws saying they’ve outlived their purpose after Ghana became a sovereign state more than six decades ago.
While decrying the deplorable conditions in prisons across the country, Mrs. Obuobisa said “one needs to visit the prisons and see how many prisoners from the ‘middle class’ are in custody as compared to vagrants who are poor and voiceless.”
The CCF’s visit is part of efforts to mobilize support of key Justice Sector Institutions for the expungement of ‘vagrancy laws’ which will eventually result in the amendment of Assembly bye-laws.
The advocacy is further pushing for the passage of Non-Custodial Sentencing bill into law which will rather create room for petty offenders to be used for developmental activities instead of throwing them into prisons.
The advocacy is part of the implementation of the NGO’s one-year project dubbed ‘Decriminalizing Vagrancy Laws & Advocacy’ with funding from the Open Society Initiative for West Africa (OSIWA).
Meanwhile, the Director of Public Prosecutions, Yvonne Atakora Obuobisa commended the intervention by CCF and OSIWA saying it is “a step in the right direction because it is important we do something about the situation.”
To further buttress her reason for supporting the CCF-OSIWA initiative, she disclosed that as a young attorney in the 1990s, she “saw many people sent to prison for using marijuana and other substances…”…Typically, after imprisoning about ten (10) people for these offences, you got demoralized because it was only the poor who were imprisoned while the real faces behind drug trafficking were hardly sentenced”, she stressed.
For his part, the Executive Director of CCF, Ibrahim Oppong Kwarteng called on the State Prosecutor to use her influence to speed up the passage of the Non-Custodial Sentencing bill into law.
Even though the Attorney General, Godfred Dame is confident this law will be enacted before the end of the 8th Parliament, Mr. Oppong Kwarteng stated that the key Justice Sector Institutions should see the urgency in its passage.
He deplored the maltreatment of vagrants by Assembly authorities who eventually imprison these poor persons because they defaulted in paying fines.
“I have come across certain individuals especially in my work in the prisons who have been imprisoned for vagrancy behavior and because of the absence of a Non-Custodial Sentencing law,(something we have been championing), petty offenders are sent to prison. Under normal circumstances, if we had a law we could have committed them to some sort of community service. We want to appeal to your esteem office to at least fast track its passage,” he said.
The Executive Director of CCF further lamented that some of the assemblies don’t live up to their duties.
“These people who are called ‘Abaye” who work with the MMDAs use clubs and sticks to maim vagrants and we think it is unacceptable. Some of these people are poor and it is against their fundamental human rights. Some of the assemblies have shirked their responsibilities and they are left off the hook. Landlords, for instance, do not construct toilets and when these poor people defecate indiscriminately they are prosecuted.”
Legal Reforms
Mrs Obuobisa also appealed to CCF as an organization with expertise in human rights and media advocacy to keep fronting for the removal of vagrancy laws and other obnoxious legislations that undermines human rights.
By Sefakor Fekpe