Trends and Conditions of Imprisonment in Nigeria

Abstract

This article analyzes the trends and conditions of imprisonment in Nigeria. The analysis reveals an upsurge in prisons admissions, and a high proportion of detainees and inmates remanded pending trial. High rates of custodial morbidity, mortality and overcrowding, poor health care, and inadequate nutrition and food prevail in Nigerian prisons. The rate of execution increased between 1984 and 1990 under the Buhari and Babangida military regimes. Nigeria needs to deliberately adopt socioeconomic and political policies that help to prevent crimes and enhance the correction of offenders-instead of the current preoccupation with repressive policing and cruel and unusual punishments within the nation's prisons.