Sulaimon Olanrewaju compares the rights of prison inmates in some countries with their Nigerian contemporaries. A prisoner is one anywhere be it in Nigeria, the United States of America, Britain, Germany, France or Canada. He has his freedom curtailed, enjoys limited privileges and he is under close watch all day and night. But there the similarity between a prisoner serving his time in a Nigerian prison and the one doing his time in any of the aforementioned countries ends because a prisoner in Nigeria does not only lose his freedom, he is also deprived of his dignity as he is subjected to subhuman treatments. This, however, is in flagrant defiance of the provision of Section 34 of the amended 1999 Constitution which states that 'Every individual is entitled to respect for the dignity of his person and accordingly no person shall be subjected to torture or inhuman or degrading treatment.'The treatment meted out to the Nigerian prisoner is suggestive of a possible non-satisfaction of the state with the incarceration of the prisoner and has to subject him to dehumanisation as a continuation of his punishment. This is despite a subsisting judgment as delivered in Robinson Wabah and 2 ors V COP Rivers and 3 ors (1985) 6 NCLR, that '...to detain a person under deplorable prison conditions constitutes an infringement of the fundamental right of every man to respect for the dignity of his person.'However, despite the court judgment, Nigerian prison inmates are daily subjected to inhuman treatments; their rights are violated by prison officials, some of them are physically abused, they are not allowed access to medical facilities, they are not allowed to have access to legal representation and they are made to pay for services already provided by the state. Unfortunately, they have no means of communicating their grievances to the authorities.But dehumanising prisoners is not a universal phenomenon as prisoners in developed countries are not usually subjected to sub-mortal treatment.The USAIn the United States of America, even the most hardened convict has his basic rights, as enshrined in the constitution, protected by the state. This is to enable him survive and sustain a reasonable way of life despite his imprisonment. These rights include the right to due processes; administrative appeals; right to access the parole process (denied to those incarcerated in the Federal System); right to practise religion freely; right to equal protection (Fourteenth Amendment); right to be notified of all charges against them; right to receive a written statement explaining evidence used in reaching a disposition; right to file a civil suit against another person; right to medical treatment (both long and short term); right to mental health treatment that is both adequate and appropriate; right to a hearing upon being relocated to the mental health facility; right to personal property (cigarettes, stationary, a watch, cosmetics, and snack-food); right to visitation; right to adequate food that would sustain an average person; the right to bathe and the right to not be punished cruelly or unusually.In addition to all these, the USA law states that no pre-trial detainee, those who are too poor to afford bail and are therefore kept in jail while the trial lasts, should be subjected to inhuman conditions. He cannot be housed in sub-standard facilities and cannot be punished.According to FindLaw, a website that educates the public on legal issues, in 1995, a federal court in Massachusetts found that inmates' constitutional rights were violated when they were held in a 150-year-old prison that was infested with vermin, fire hazards, and a lack of toilets.Prison inmates also have a right to fair hearing despite their incarceration. They have a right of access to the courts to air their complaints either against the state or prison authorities. This is exemplified by the ruling of a federal court in Iowa which awarded a prisoner over $7,000 in damages after it was found that he was placed in solitary segregation for one year and then transferred to a different facility where his life was in danger just because he complained about prison conditions and filed a lawsuit challenging the conditions of his confinement.Prison inmates in the USA are also entitled to medical care and attention as needed to treat both short-term conditions and long-term illnesses. The medical care provided must be adequate and they do not have to pay a farthing to enjoy the best medical facilities in the country.France France has a challenge similar to that of Nigeria in the area of over-crowded prisons. The prisons which were built to house 52,535 inmates at a point had up to 63,351 prisoners. So, in some cases a cell meant for one person is occupied by three prisoners. Warders at a point had a faceoff with the government on the issue because they believed that the high rate of suicide among French prison inmates was due to the declining state of facilities in the penitentiaries.Though some of the rights of prisoners have been subjected to abuse as a result of the over-stretched facilities, the courts have risen to uphold the rights of the prisoners. That was exactly the case of Christian Donat, who was held in Rouen Prison in France. According to the 46-year-old, serving 12 years for sexual offenses, he was forced to share his cell with two other inmates and there was an open toilet not far from the cooking corner. He, therefore, sued the state and in March 2008, won 3,000 euros ($4,700) in damages.The court ruled that cramming three men into a cell was an affront to human dignity, an abuse of Donat's human right and a disregard for French hygiene regulations, which formed the basis for the award of damages.The import of this is that while the state agreed that it had challenges with facilities for keeping prison inmates, this, nonetheless, would not make it to abdicate its responsibility of taking care of the interest and welfare of its citizens even if they have run foul of the laws of the land.However, apart from abuses arising from stretched facilities in the penitentiaries, the French state ensures that the rights of those behind prison walls are protected; they are not subjected to physical abuse, they enjoy adequate feeding and medical care.BritainBritain does not have any problem with over-crowded prisons; neither does the British Parliament believe it has any challenge with prisoners' rights abuse. But the parliament will have a hard task convincing the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) that it is not trampling on the rights of prisoners.The ECHR had ruled in 2005 that the United Kingdom's law denying prisoners the right to vote is a violation of Article 3 of Protocol No. 1 of the ECHR. Since the ruling, there has been considerable pressure on the UK to allow prisoners participate in deciding who represent them in government.In 2001, a convicted prisoner had lodged a complaint about his being denied right to participate in the electoral process while serving his time. The court had ruled that it was wrong to deny a prison inmate an opportunity to vote in an election. The UK appealed to the ECHR Grand Chamber in October 2005 but the Grand Chamber upheld the ruling of the court.According to the ECHR ruling, voting in an election is a right, not a privilege, of all UK citizens, including prisoners. The court stated that 'prisoners in general continue to enjoy all of the rights and freedoms (including the right to vote) guaranteed under the Convention, save the right to liberty.'The court added that denying convicted prisoners the right to vote without any consideration for the length of the individual's sentence or the gravity of the offence 'constitutes disproportionate punishment... An automatic blanket ban imposed on all convicted prisoners, which was arbitrary in its effects, could no longer be said to serve the aim of punishing the applicant once his tariff (time period representing retribution and deterrence) had expired.'The state sill has not agreed that prisoners should be allowed to vote. To that extent, they are disenfranchised and their right trampled upon.
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