Pensioners Rehabilitation and Welfare Action (PRAWA) has kicked against the imprisonment of offenders with minor crimes to decongest the prisons.

Programmes Officer Mrs. Katumi Iboirien, who addressed reporters during PRAWA’s second coordination meeting yesterday, recommended that cases of minor offenders should rather be mediated out of court and resolved.

According to her, most of these minor cases can be mediated and settled out of court rather than incarcerating the accused who will be fed with tax payers’ money, and then contribute to prison congestion.

She listed the categories of offences to include minor traffic offences, which attract less than N10,000 fine. Offenders, who are unable to pay such fine, are often thrown into Correctional Centres to further congest the facility.

Mrs. Iboirien, who lamented that poverty in Nigeria has been criminalised, noted that children of the poor are often the victims, as they constitute majority of those awaiting trial.

She also lamented that petty offences, such as being a rogue and vagabond, loitering, hawking and being a public nuisance, are criminalised by some state laws.

To this end, Mrs. Iboirien advocated for the decriminalisation of such petty offences, saying with a high number of non-convicted offenders awaiting trial, it has become imperative to address some of the apparent challenges within the Nigerian Criminal Justice system.

She said: “PRAWA is currently implementing a two-year project, funded by the Open Society Initiative for West Africa, on the Decriminalisation and Declassification of Petty Offences Project. The first phase includes the baseline assessment study to investigate the awareness and state of petty offences of the focal states, to determine the kinds of support and interventions to be provided to beneficiaries.

“One of the key advocacy points under the Decriminalisation and Declassification of petty offences Project in Nigeria is for the use of non-custodial sanctions in place of imprisonment, as much as possible. Thus, persons who commit petty offences will be able to undergo corrections for their actions without enduring the trauma associated with custody, which is then reserved for more severe offenders.”