The walls of Ghana’s prisons are not just crumbling under the weight of inmates—they are buckling beneath the weight of a justice system that punishes more than it reforms, that condemns where it should correct, and that forgets that to imprison a soul is not always to preserve a society.
Across the country, the stench of overpopulation in prison cells competes with the stench of injustice. Places meant for 100 hold 300. Men sleep standing. Women bleed without pads. Youths imprisoned for stealing plantains lie chained beside convicted armed robbers. One stole to eat, the other to kill—but our justice system calls them both criminals, and feeds them the same cold porridge.
Let us not lie to ourselves—our prisons are not reformative. They are forgotten slaughterhouses of potential, where sickness festers, dignity dies, and hope goes to rot. Ask those who leave Nsawam or Kumasi Prisons. Many exit not reformed, but ruined—carrying skin diseases, decaying teeth, untreated mental illness, and the shame of being branded by society for life. Prison in Ghana is not a second chance—it’s a death sentence on slow motion.
And for what crimes? For rolling a joint? For hawking on the street? For owing GHS 500 and failing to pay? For using your hands to pick food because you had no spoon?
In these same overcrowded cells, first-time petty offenders are confined with seasoned criminals, hardened by the system, skilled in new darkness. Young boys enter with guilt, and leave with gangs. Girls are imprisoned in their twenties and never marry again. Their sin? A misdemeanour committed under the weight of hunger.
Yet while these cells overflow, our gutters do not. Our streets remain filthy. Our abandoned community libraries gather dust. Cemeteries are overgrown. Town centres cry out for maintenance. **These inmates could have been made to serve, to clean, to build—**to pay for their wrong with dignity and be restored with purpose.
But no. Because our laws still treat every offence as a ticket to confinement. Because our judges lack the legal tools to offer real justice. Because Ghana still has not passed a comprehensive Non-Custodial Sentencing Law. And the result is that our prisons become our shame—overcrowded, outdated, unjust.
Ghana is not alone in this crisis, but we are shamefully behind. The Netherlands, Norway, and even parts of Africa like Kenya and South Africa have embraced alternative sentencing: community service, probation, restorative justice models. The UK saw crime reduce when it adopted non-custodial models for non-violent offences. But Ghana? We are still stuck in colonial-era thinking: lock them up and forget they exist.
This is a call—not to sympathy—but to conscience.
To the Constitutional Review Committee: this is your moment. Codify what is just. Let non-custodial sentencing become not just an option, but a pillar of our justice system. Let our constitution reflect that justice must rehabilitate—not simply retaliate.
To Parliament: stop debating this with folded arms. Visit our prisons. Feel the suffocation. Witness the injustice. Then ask yourselves if you’d want your child jailed over GHS 200.
And to the President and his Cabinet: Ghana cannot build a just society with unjust institutions. The justice system is not broken—it is cruel by design. Change it.
We are not asking you to set criminals free.
We are asking you to stop destroying the lives of people who could have been saved.
Justice must be seen to be done. But more importantly, it must be seen to be right.
Let the next reform be bold. Let it be historic.
Let it be the end of blind punishment and the birth of redemptive justice.
Because how we treat the lowest among us says everything about who we really are.
