The Nigerian Correctional Service (NCoS), formerly known as Nigerian Prison Service (NPS), is a government agency of Nigeria which operates prisons. The agency is headquartered in Abuja, [1] and it is under the supervision of the Ministry of the Interior and the Civil Defence Immigration and Correctional Service. [2] The name was changed from the Nigerian Prisons Service to the Nigerian Correctional Service by President Muhammadu Buhari on the 15th of August 2019 after signing the Nigerian Correctional Service Act of 2019 into law. [3] The bill was passed by the 8th Assembly of the House of Representatives but the signing was done two months after their tenure had expired. The law divides the Correctional Service into two main areas which are The Custodial Service and Non-custodial Service. [4]
The Nigerian Correctional Service is an arm of the Criminal Justice System domiciled in the Ministry of Interior.
The Nigerian Correctional Service is a federal phenomenon. i.e. there are no State Correctional Services in the Nigeria. Every Custodial Centre is a Federal Facility. The operation of the Service is supervised by the Ministry of Interior and the Civil Defence, Fire, Immigration and Corrections Board. [5] The Controller General of the Nigerian correctional Service is Ja’afaru Ahmed. His tenure was extended by one year with effect from the 21st of July 2019 by President Muhammadu Buhari. [6]
The origin of modern Correctional Service in Nigeria is 1861. That was the year when conceptually, Western-type prison was established in Nigeria. The declaration of Lagos as a colony in 1861 marked the beginning of the institution of formal machinery of governance. At this stage the preoccupation of the colonial government was to protect legitimate trade, guarantee the profit of British merchants as well as guarantee the activities of the missionaries. To this end, by 1861, the acting governor of the Lagos colony and who was then a prominent British merchant in Lagos, formed a Police Force of about 25 constables. This was followed in 1863 by the establishment in Lagos of four courts: a Police court to resolve petty disputes, a criminal court to try the more serious cases, a slave court to try cases arising from the efforts to abolish the trade in slaves and a commercial court to resolve disputes among merchants and traders. The functioning of these courts and the police in that colonial setting necessarily meant that prison was needed to complete the system. And it was not long in coming for in 1872, the Broad Street prison was established with an initial inmate capacity of 300.
In the Niger Delta, the relationship between the local people and the British merchants had before then been moderated by special courts of merchants backed by the British Navy especially with the appointment of John Beecroft as a consul in 1849. The need for a merchant court was underscored by the fact that most conflicts between the merchants and the local people were in the main commercial. Although there was evidence of prison in Bonny at this time, not much is known about its size and content. But those who were later to oppose British rule were usually deported as happened in the case of Jaja of Opobo and King Dappa of Bonny.
However, the progressive incursion of the British into the hinterland and the establishment of British protectorate towards the end of the 19th century necessitated the establishment of the prisons as the last link in the Criminal Justice System. Thus by 1910, there already were prisons in Degema, Calabar, Onitsha, Benin, Ibadan, Sapele, Jebba and Lokoja. The declaration of protectorates over the East, West and North by 1906 effectively brought the entire Nigeria area under British rule. However, that did not mark the beginning of a unified Nigerian Prisons.
Even so, the colonial prison at this stage was not designed to reform anyone. There was no systematic penal policy from which direction could be sought for penal administration. Instead, prisoners were in the main used for public works and other jobs for the colonial administration. For this reason, there was no need for the recruitment of trained officers of the prisons. Hence colonial prisons had no trained and developed staff of their own and instead the police also performed prison duties. As time went on ex-servicemen were recruited to do the job.
They were also very poorly run, and the local prison conditions varied from one place to another in their disorganization, callousness and exploitation. But so long as they served the colonial interests of ensuring law and order, collecting taxes, and providing labour for public works, they were generally left alone. The result was that the prisons served the purpose of punishing those who had the guts to oppose colonial administration in one form or the other while at the same time cowing those who might want to stir up trouble for the colonial set up.
The Prison regulation was published in 1917 to prescribe admission, custody, treatment and classification procedures as well as staffing, dieting and clothing regimes for the prisons. These processes were limited in one very general sense. They were not geared towards any particular type of treatment of inmates. Instead, they represent just policies of containment of those who were already in prison. Besides, they were limited in application to those who were convicted or remanded in custody by criminal courts of the British-inspired supreme or provincial types. Those remanded or convicted by the Native courts were sent to the Native Authority prisons. The prison regulation also distinguished between Awaiting Trial and convicted inmates and even stipulated the convict – category to be found in each type of prison. But the limited application of this general rule to the national Prison while the native Authority Prison went their own way effectively stultified the appearance of a national Prison goal-orientation in terms of inmate treatment.
It was not until 1934 that any meaningful attempt was made to introduce relative modernization into the Prison Service. It was at this time that Colonel V. L. Mabb was appointed Director of Prisons by the then Governor Sir Donald Cameron. Although a military officer, Mabb had an understanding of what prisons should be. And he went on to do his best. What he seemed to have focused his attention on was the formation of a unified Prison structure for the whole country, but he failed. Yet he succeeded in extending the substantive Director of Prisons’ supervisory and inspectoral powers over the Native Authority Prisons by this time dominant in the North. It was also during his tenure that the Prisons Warders Welfare Board was formed.
His efforts were to be continued by his successor R. H. Dolan (1946 – 55). Mr. Dolan was a trained prison officer and when he assumed duties in Nigeria he already had a wealth of experience in prison administration in both Britain and the colonies. Although a scheme for the introduction of vocational training in the National Prisons had been introduced in 1917 and it failed except in Kaduna and Lokoja prisons where it was functioning in 1926, Mr. Dolan reintroduced it in 1949 as a cardinal part of a penal treatment in Nigeria. He also made classification of prisoners mandatory in all prisons and went on to introduce visits by relations to inmates. He also introduced progressive earning schemes for long term first offenders. He also transferred the Prisons Headquarters formerly in Enugu to Lagos to facilitate close cooperation with other Department of State. He also introduced moral and adult education classes to be handled by competent Ministers and teachers for both Christian and Islamic education. Programmes for recreation and relaxation of prisoners were introduced during his tenure as well as the formation of an association for the care and rehabilitation of discharged prisoners. But above all, he initiated a programme for the construction and expansion of even bigger convict prisons to enhance the proper classification and accommodation of prisoners.
On manpower development, he was instrumental to the founding of the Prison Training School, Enugu in 1947. He also saw to the appointment of educated wardresses to take charge of the female wings of the prisons and he generally tried to improve the service conditions of the prison staff. In addition, he took classification a step further when in 1948 he opened four reformatories in Lagos and converted part of the Port-Harcourt prisons for the housing and treatment of juveniles. Five years later he was to build an open prison in Kakuri - Kaduna to take care of first offenders who had committed such crimes as murder and manslaughter, and who are serving terms of 15 years or more. The idea was to train them with minimum supervision in agriculture so that on discharge they could employ themselves gainfully. In fact, Dolan’s tenure represented a very high point in the evolution of Nigeria Prisons Service. [2]
Prisons include: [7]
Adamawa State:
Ebonyi State:
Federal Capital Territory:
Lagos State:
Edo State:
Yobe State:
Penal transportation was the relocation of convicted criminals, or other persons regarded as undesirable, to a distant place, often a colony, for a specified term; later, specifically established penal colonies became their destination. While the prisoners may have been released once the sentences were served, they generally did not have the resources to return home.
Parole is a form of early release of a prison inmate where the prisoner agrees to abide by behavioral conditions, including checking-in with their designated parole officers, or else they may be rearrested and returned to prison.
A federal prison is operated under the jurisdiction of a federal government as opposed to a state or provincial body. Federal prisons are used for convicts who violated federal law, inmates considered dangerous (Brazil), or those sentenced to longer terms of imprisonment (Canada). Not all federated countries have a legal concept of "federal prison".
Prison reform is the attempt to improve conditions inside prisons, improve the effectiveness of a penal system, or implement alternatives to incarceration. It also focuses on ensuring the reinstatement of those whose lives are impacted by crimes.
Parklea Correctional Centre, a privately managed Australian maximum and minimum security prison for males, is located at Parklea, in the north-western suburbs of Sydney, New South Wales. The facility is operated by MTC Ventia and has a current capacity for 1,350 inmates. The Centre accepts prisoners charged and convicted under New South Wales and/or Commonwealth legislation and incorporates a minimum-security work-release centre for inmates nearing release with a capacity of 120. A Compulsory Drug Treatment Correctional unit is incorporated within the centre.
A military prison is a prison operated by a military. Military prisons are used variously to house prisoners of war, unlawful combatants, those whose freedom is deemed a national security risk by the military or national authorities, and members of the military found guilty of a serious crime. There are two types: penal and confinement-oriented, where captured enemy combatants are confined for military reasons until hostilities cease. Most militaries have some sort of military police unit operating at the divisional level or below to perform many of the same functions as civilian police, from traffic-control to the arrest of violent offenders and the supervision of detainees and prisoners of war.
Bathurst Correctional Centre, originally built as Bathurst Gaol in 1888, is a prison for men and women located in the city of Bathurst, New South Wales, Australia, and operated by the Department of Communities and Justice. Bathurst holds inmates sentenced under State or Australian criminal law, along with a small number of remand prisoners.
A super-maximum security (supermax) or administrative maximum (ADX) prison is a "control-unit" prison, or a unit within prisons, which represents the most secure level of custody in the prison systems of certain countries.
Prisons in Hong Kong are correctional facilities in Hong Kong, which are managed by the Correctional Services Department. Facilities have different purposes. Hong Kong has one of the highest rates of imprisonment in the region.
Penal labour is a term for various kinds of forced labour that prisoners are required to perform, typically manual labour. The work may be light or hard, depending on the context. Forms of sentence involving penal labour have included involuntary servitude, penal servitude, and imprisonment with hard labour. The term may refer to several related scenarios: labour as a form of punishment, the prison system used as a means to secure labour, and labour as providing occupation for convicts. These scenarios can be applied to those imprisoned for political, religious, war, or other reasons as well as to criminal convicts.
The penal system of Japan is part of the criminal justice system of Japan. It is intended to resocialize, reform, rehabilitate and punish offenders. The penal system is operated by the Correction Bureau of the Ministry of Justice.
Corrective Services New South Wales (CSNSW) is a division of the Department of Communities and Justice of the Government of New South Wales, Australia. CSNSW is responsible for the state's prisons and a range of programs for managing offenders in the community. The state has 36 prisons, 33 run by CSNSW and three privately operated. The agency traces its origins back to 1788, when New South Wales was founded as a penal colony.
A prison, also known as a jail, gaol, penitentiary, detention center, correction center, correctional facility, or remand center, is a facility where people are confined against their will and denied their liberty under the authority of the state, generally as punishment for various crimes. Authorities most commonly use prisons within a criminal-justice system: people charged with crimes may be imprisoned until their trial; those who have pled or been found guilty of crimes at trial may be sentenced to a specified period of imprisonment.
The Federal Penitentiary Service is a federal agency of the Ministry of Justice of Russia responsible for correctional services.
Imprisonment began to replace other forms of criminal punishment in the United States just before the American Revolution, though penal incarceration efforts had been ongoing in England since as early as the 1500s, and prisons in the form of dungeons and various detention facilities had existed as early as the first sovereign states. In colonial times, courts and magistrates would impose punishments including fines, forced labor, public restraint, flogging, maiming, and death, with sheriffs detaining some defendants awaiting trial. The use of confinement as a punishment in itself was originally seen as a more humane alternative to capital and corporal punishment, especially among Quakers in Pennsylvania. Prison building efforts in the United States came in three major waves. The first began during the Jacksonian Era and led to the widespread use of imprisonment and rehabilitative labor as the primary penalty for most crimes in nearly all states by the time of the American Civil War. The second began after the Civil War and gained momentum during the Progressive Era, bringing a number of new mechanisms—such as parole, probation, and indeterminate sentencing—into the mainstream of American penal practice. Finally, since the early 1970s, the United States has engaged in a historically unprecedented expansion of its imprisonment systems at both the federal and state level. Since 1973, the number of incarcerated persons in the United States has increased five-fold. Now, about 2,200,000 people, or 3.2 percent of the adult population, are imprisoned in the United States, and about 7,000,000 are under supervision of some form in the correctional system, including parole and probation. Periods of prison construction and reform produced major changes in the structure of prison systems and their missions, the responsibilities of federal and state agencies for administering and supervising them, as well as the legal and political status of prisoners themselves.
In the United States, penal labor is a multi-billion-dollar industry. Annually, incarcerated workers provide at least $9 billion in services to the prison system and produce more than $2 billion in goods. The industry underwent many transitions throughout the late 19th and early and mid 20th centuries. Legislation such as the Hawes-Cooper Act of 1929 placed limitations on the trade of prison-made goods. Federal establishment of the Federal Prison Industries (FPI) in 1934 revitalized the prison labor system following the Great Depression. Increases in prison labor participation began in 1979 with the formation of the Prison Industry Enhancement Certification Program (PIECP). The PIECP is a federal program first authorized under the Justice System Improvement Act of 1979. Approved by Congress in 1990 for indefinite continuation, the program legalizes the transportation of prison-made goods across state lines and allows prison inmates to earn market wages in private sector jobs that can go towards tax deductions, victim compensation, family support, and room and board.
A prison break is an unlawful act under Nigerian law, of a prisoner forcing their way out of a prison. It can also be described as attacks on the Nigerian Prisons Services by terrorists such as Boko Haram and armed robbers in which many prisoners are released. Often, when this occurs effort are made by the Nigerian Prisons Services in conjunction with security agency to rearrest the escapee and return them to the prison and this may result in the extension of their jail term. Prison break in Nigeria may be attributed to corruption, poor funding of the prison services, poor prison facilities, inadequate security features such as CCTV, motion sensors, high wall made up of barbed wire and sometimes electric fencing of the wall.
Kirikiri Maximum Security Prison is a prison west of Apapa, Lagos State, Nigeria. It is named after the rural Kirikiri community in which it is situated. A part of the Nigerian Correctional Service, its official capacity is 1,056. It was first established in 1955. Paul Chiama of Leadership wrote that "The mention of Kirikiri first reminds any Nigerian of" this prison.
Norway's criminal justice system focuses on the principles of restorative justice and the rehabilitation of prisoners. Correctional facilities in Norway focus on maintaining custody of the offender and attempting to make them functioning members of society. Norway's prison system is renowned as one of the most effective and humane in the world.
Yinka Lawanson known by his stage name Lamboginny is a Nigerian Afro-Dancehall musician, youtuber, and humanitarian. Lamboginny is the co-convener of Say No To Crime movement and the advocate of S.A.L.T, a prison reform program in-line with the 2030 Agenda of the Sustainable Development Goals by United Nation in September 2015.
