Mental health issues in Nigerian prisons
A prison, correctional facility, penitentiary or jail is a facility in which inmates are forcibly confined and denied a variety of freedoms under the authority of the State, as a form of punishment.
The most common use of prisons is as part of a criminal justice system in which individuals officially charged with or convicted for crimes are confined to a prison until they are either brought to trial to determine their guilt or complete the period of incarceration they were sentenced to after being found guilty during their trial.
The beginning of prisons can be traced back to the rise of the State as a form of social organisation, which coincided with the development of the written language that helped in the creation of formalised legal codes as official guidelines for the society. The penalties for violations of these laws were almost exclusively centred on the concept of retaliation found in legal codes of early civilisation. A variety of existing structures were used to house prisoners, such as metal cages, basements of public buildings and quarries. Forced labour in public projects and varying terms of slavery were commonly associated with prisoners.
Every society has always had its own criminal justice system, with a provision of prison system to accommodate offenders. Long before the colonial masters came, Africans had developed their own traditional criminal justice, with the prisons usually located near the palaces.
The possession of the right and the capability to imprison citizens, however, granted an air of legitimacy to officials at all levels of government – from kings to village heads. The colonial masters merely built on the system they met on ground by improving on the state of the accommodation.
The colonial masters used some of these facilities as asylums for offenders who resisted colonialism and banished them under the guise of some mental illness without proper clinical assessment and treatment plan. This actually illustrates the precarious relationship between correctional facilities and mental health.
Two major theories have dominated the development of the prison system, namely the theory of deterrence that makes the prison a harsh place in order to deter people from committing crime out of fear of going to prison; and the rehabilitation or moral theory, which is based on the religious ideas that equated crime with sin and views the prison as a place to instruct prisoners in moral lessons, obedience and proper behaviour.
The later reformers affirm that prisons could be managed as humane institutions of moral instructions where the prisoners’ behaviour could be corrected to become models of good behaviour when they are released. They could be initiated members of the society.
Long years of military rule had negatively affected the development of our prison system, where they had functioned as mere facilities of repression, especially for those tagged as political offenders. However, the challenges of a democratic 21st Century Nigeria prescribes that our prison system must be managed in a way that will enhance mental capital development.
In a country with decades of substantial oil earnings still parading more than 80 per cent of her population living below poverty line, we should prepare for a strong prison system to cater for those who may react against oppression by the few thieving elites, while it should also serve as an avenue to reform the megalomaniac political office holders.
It is empirically established that unemployment, poor housing and poverty are responsible for the increased violation of our legal codes, leading to the overpopulation of our prisons. These factors are, paradoxically, associated with the development of mental health disorders.
In the United States, for instance, there are about 2.2 million persons in prisons, among whom there is a higher percentage of the mentally ill than in the psychiatric hospitals.
A systematic review of 62 surveys of the incarcerated population from 12 western countries shows that the men have about 3.7 per cent psychosis, 10 per cent depression, 65 per cent having personality disorder, with 47 per cent of them with the antisocial type.
Among the women prisoners, four per cent have psychosis, 12 per cent depression, 42 per cent have personality disorders and about 70 per cent of the total inmates have primary or co-existing cases of substance abuse. Unfortunately, barely one in three ever gets identified or treated, even in such developed climes. Mental health is, therefore, at the centre of any effective prison reform programme.
As much as we are culturally wired in the direction of punishment rather than reformation, mental health issues certainly underlie most cases of imprisonment, either as a political office holder embezzling millions of funds meant for constructing bridges and roads; or the vagrant miscreants, economically displaced and homeless that have to resort to antisocial activities to survive. They all need a robust mental health-based rehabilitation programme.
I am not certain the Nigerian prison authority can boast two consultant psychiatrists; and like to query how much of mental health training is included in the training of our prison workers.
PUNCH.
