When in the year 2019 the Federal Government of Nigeria enacted the Nigerian Correctional Service Act, not all may have seen the move beyond the change of name of what was then known as the Nigerian Prisons Service. As is common with matters of this nature, some might have only taken a cursory look at other details of the news report which indicated that the new law also provided for non-custodial measures in the dispensation of criminal justice in our jurisdiction.
Non-custodial measures would mean that aside of imprisonment, other sanctions or supervised restrictions such as parole, probation, community service and other restorative measures may be visited on offenders that have been arrested and brought before justice. This development is not peculiar to Nigeria. It is an ongoing global shift in the perception of crime and punishment.
If you have ever been a victim of crime, I assume you will be among the several hundreds of people who seek to know what indeed is justice whenever someone gets hurt or gets deprived of his possessions by another.
I recall that many years ago, a friend of ours was robbed of his car and other valuable possessions by a gang of armed robbers in a traumatising display of man’s inhumanity to man. A few months down the line, the robbers were arrested and paraded by the Nigerian Police. Our friend’s hope of recovering his car was dashed when after a long time he was only invited by the police as lead prosecution witness in the case between the state and the accused persons. Although a conviction was obtained and the robbers were sent to long jail terms, neither the court nor the police gave any indication about recovering the stolen car and the other valuables of the victim.
The concerns thrown up by the foregoing story are: At what time did the accused persons steal from the state? Secondly, of what value are the long jail terms to the victim whose car and valuables (not the state’s) were stolen? These are the questions the new paradigm shift in global perception of crime and punishment has set out to address through the use of restorative justice.
Restorative Justice is a new legal reasoning which asserts that when a crime is committed, there are usually three key stakeholders in its outcome; these are the offender, the victim and the community where the incident occurred (not abstract legal creation known as State). This is illustrated by questions such as what harm has been caused? Who has suffered the hurt? What are the needs of those affected by the harm? What does it take to repair the harm so as to put things right as much as possible and whose responsibility it is to making it right? These restorative process questions are radically different from the current retributive process of what law has been broken, who broke the law and what are the prescribed legal sanctions for the offence.
For far too long, victims of crime have routinely suffered two injustices. The first is when they become victims of violent and negative people who either steal from them or physically hurt them for no just cause. The second injustice arises when the state stands in for the victim without as much courtesy or morality to assuage the victim of his hurt or asks him what he wants.
What the restorative justice movement seeks to achieve is to bring the offender to account to the victim for the harm he has caused and to assuage the immediate community to which he has sent the jitters by his acts of savagery. A method of achieving restorative justice is through what is known as a Victim – Offender Mediation (VOM). In a victim – offender mediation, the victim and the offender are brought face to face to discuss what has happened, why it happened and what should be done to heal the harm caused. This can include an apology, a return of stolen items or compensation of any kind agreed between the victim and the offender.
For a victim-offender mediation to hold, the offender must first accept his guilt before the court, as well as mutually agree with the victim to participate in the mediation process. Where any of the parties decline to attend the mediation, the process will not hold. Under Nigeria laws, restorative justice is provided for under statutes such as the Correctional Service Act 2019, Child Rights Act 2003, and the Administration of Criminal Justice Act 2015, to mention a few.
No one should be under the illusion that restorative justice is a way to let out criminals from appropriate sanctions for offences committed. While the measure can in some cases mitigate sanctions prescribed for offences particularly in small offences, restorative justices would not shield any big time criminal from sanctions such as terms of imprisonment. What it does is to bring therapeutic closure to parties involved in the incident.