Punishment before Trial: The Case for Reforming Pretrial Detention in Nigeria

Abstract

In decent society, before a person is punished, they must have committed a crime. The laws of democratic countries prohibit punishment before trial. In Nigeria, that prohibition is contained in the constitution which grants everyone accused of crime, the right to a fair trial and the right to be presumed innocent until otherwise is proven. This paper tries to show that despite these constitutional protections given to all persons in Nigeria, pretrial detainees who are merely accused of crimes suffer extremely punitive conditions before they are subjected to a trial. This paper demonstrates the failure of the Nigerian pretrial detention system to protect the dignity of pretrial detainees whose guilt has not been proved before a court. At the end, this paper draws ideas from Ghana and United States of America, of reforms that could help Nigeria fix its broken pretrial detention system.