President Muhammadu Buhari has signed into law, a bill changing the Nigeria Prisons Service (NPS) to Nigerian Correctional Service.
The Senior Special Assistant (SSA) to the President on National Assembly Matters (Senate), Senator Ita Enang, said on Wednesday in Abuja that the Correctional Service comprises Custodial and Non-Custodial Service.
The presidential aide explained that the Non-Custodial Service is intended to be a place of reformation and that the person sentenced under this will not stay in custody but will have remediation.
On the Nigerian Correctional Service Bill, 2019, Enang said: “This Act repeals the Prisons Acts and changes the name from Nigeria Prisons Service to Nigerian Correctional Service, otherwise known as ‘the Correctional Service’.
The Custodial Service is to take control of persons legally interned in safe, secure and humane conditions and also convey remand persons to and from courts in motorised formations.
He said the Act, in Section 12 (2) (c), further states “that where an inmate sentenced to death has exhausted all legal procedures for appeal and a period of 10 years has elapsed without execution of the sentence, the Chief Judge may commute the sentence of death to life imprisonment.”
According to him, Section 12 (8) empowers the State Controller of the Service to reject more intakes of inmates, where it is apparent that the correctional centre in question is filled to capacity.
Enang said non-custodial faculty of the Correctional Service is responsible for the administration of non-custodial measures, namely: Community Service, probation, parole, restorative justice measures and such other measures as a court of competent jurisdiction may order.
“Restorative justice measures approved in the Act include victim-offender mediation, family group conferencing, community mediation and other conciliatory measures as may be deemed necessary pre-trial, trial during imprisonment or even post-imprisonment stages,” he said.
He noted that the law is to ensure there is enough funding for the service that will take care of the welfare of the inmates and workers.
MM/GIK/APA