ADR and LAC Acts

There has been a call from stakeholders in the Western region on the need to review the Alternative Disputes Resolution Act and Legal Aid Commission Act to allow some petty/minor crimes to be resolved through ADR to enhance Ghana’s justice delivery system. For decades, Ghana’s criminal justice system is confronted with numerous challenges that inhibit effective and equitable justice delivery in the country.

These challenges include issues of overcrowding in prisons and detention facilities, pre-trial detainees (remand prisoners) ” not having their cases heard within a reasonable time, unreasonable delays in administering of justice caused by frequent adjournments, slow processing of documents due to high caseloads in court and limited access to legal aid services largely by the marginalised, poor and vulnerable.

However, the state is not fully benefitting from both the ADR Act, 2010 (Act 798) and LAC Act, 2018 (Act 977) which are part of the interventions to resolve the challenges due to some key gaps in both Acts hence the above-enumerated challenges still persist.

The ADR Act seeks to facilitate and encourage out of court settlement of disputes to ease congestion in courts. However, congestion in courts remains a challenge as the Act does not cover petty/minor offences which fall under misdemeanours.

So petty criminal offences have all contributed to creating a backlog of cases pending in the courts and also, petty offenders add to the already overpopulated prison facilities The LAC Act on the other hand makes it discretionary to use ADR in certain cases.

In furtherance of the objective of the LAC and against the fact that there are very few criminal defence attorneys available for persons in need, especially for petty offences, it is imperative that the Act be reviewed to expressly provide for the use of ADR in resolving petty offences.

The use of ADR to settle petty criminal offences will go a long way to curb the issues of congestion and overcrowding of the courts and prisons respectfully and accomplish the goal of enhancing Ghana’s justice delivery system.

Moreover, stakeholders at a roundtable discussion in Takoradi on advocacy to review Alternative Disputes Resolution and Legal Aid Commission Act said, they as stakeholders would pay attention to relevant provisions or Act that have to be amended to reduce persons that go to prison.

According to them, the government of Ghana should place a premium on Alternative Disputes Resolution as they live in an era where they have a lot of minor or petty offences in the system.

Moreover, they emphasized that one can not be in isolation to amend the Alternative Disputes Resolution (ADR) and Legal Aid Commission (LAC) Acts without amending the Criminal Offences Act itself, hence the call for an amendment of the Criminal Offences Act (Act 29 and 30).

“The idea is to amend the aforementioned Acts as they look at the non-custodial sentence, plea bargaining, holistic approach such that the entire laws would be taken care of before other laws which would allow petty offences to be settled by Alternative Disputes Resolution but not the usual way of going to court”, they added.

Mrs Adelaide Kobiri-Woode with the Attorney General’s Department in Sekondi of the Western Region, in her view, stated if the premium is placed on Alternative Disputes Resolution, parties could subject themselves to ADR and have the court even adopt some of the things they say with prisons not being choked.

Superintendent Ibrahim Yakubu at the Sekondi Prisons Service in the Western Region stated that the idea of “ADR” if being pushed, accepted and embraced will make them have time to concentrate on major offences including robbery, murder cases among others, and also decongest the prisons.

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Notwithstanding, due to the congestion at the prisons, people who commit petty offences and are mixed with robbery offenders poses risk as they can easily be influenced by robbery and other major offenders.

However, Mr Ibrahim Yakubu noted that, with little effort, they are making sure to separate these categories of offenders in their custody.

The stakeholders’ roundtable discussion on the need to review the ADR and LAC Acts held in Takoradi in the Western region was organized by the Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative (CHRI) under the USAID Justice Sector Support (JSS) Activity.

The purpose was to bring together stakeholders together to start a conversation on the need to review both ADR and LAC to include using ADR for petty or minor offences to improve justice delivery in-country.

 

Filed By Benjamin Bray Kantanka TV W/R Correspondent