Reducing Pre-Trial Detention in Nigeria

Problem Statement: Nigeria faces a severe pre-trial detention problem that is overwhelming the country’s judicial and correctional institutions. The large number of pre-trial detainees swell correctional facility populations often 8-10 times a facility’s base capacity, overwhelms local courts many cases that are often dismissed, and finds many Nigerian citizens detained for weeks, months, even years. INL is finishing a pilot project with the correctional facilities in the central Nigerian cities of Kuje, Keffi, and Suleja that focused on several efforts. The first included deploying and training corrections and detention staff on the use of the Corrections Information Management System (CIMS) developed by the Nigerian Corrections Service (NCS) and developed a training manual for using CIMS. The project partnered with Nigerian and U.S. law schools to strengthen clinical law education that also provided of pro bono legal aid services to pre-trial detainees by teams of legal students overseen and mentored by law professors and pro bono lawyers. Third, the pilot project provided institutional support to the relevant Office of the Chief Judge in the areas of case management, court administration and remand warrant processes and procedures. Fourth, the pilot developed Court Observer App to follow the progress of the detainees’ cases. Finally, the pilot provided support to local Administrative Criminal Justice Monitoring Committee’s (ACJMC) sub-committees to strengthen their oversight capacity of the implementation and compliance with the law pertaining to pre-trial detention under the 2015 Administration of Criminal Justice Act. Collectively, these efforts have curbed the halted and started to decrease the populations of the correctional facilities, eased the backlog on pre-trial detainee cases, and reduced the time detainee are held. The success of the pilot project has led INL to seek to expand the pilot to a select group of states.
Categories: Law, Justice and Legal Services.