It has been reported that inmates in many of the Nigeria’s 227 prisons that house about 50,000 convicted persons, and those awaiting trial nationwide, are getting increasing and unauthorised access to mobile phones and the Internet.
While noting that this trend gives some prison inmates almost unfettered access to an endless stream of electronic literature and tools of social interaction, which defeats the purpose and essence of incarceration, it is feared that this access to communication technology could compromise prison security by way of facilitating jail breaks. It is further believed that some detained advanced fee (419) fraudsters could continue their obnoxious trade from within the prisons confines, through access to the Internet, via mobile phone handsets.
Reports have revealed that prison inmates’ gain access to mobile phones through the complicity of certain visitors who smuggle them in, concealed in food and other items, as well as through some unscrupulous prisons officials who run illegal telephone and internet services in the darkest hours of the night. Now, prisons authorities are said to be responding to the problem by conducting regular manual checks on inmates, officials, visitors and foodstuffs among others, in a bid to stem the flow of unauthorised mobile communication gadgets into the prisons across the country.
As experts opine that this manual surveillance and control approach is cumbersome and porous, they suggest that a foolproof solution is to deploy electronic scramblers in the nation’s prisons. The challenge with this is that the scrambling devices are estimated to cost about $1,800 (about N265, 050) each. Thus the cost of deploying the scramblers in all of the country’s 227 prisons and lock-ups, would then come to about N60 million. It is pertinent to remark that over the years, the budget of the Nigeria Prisons Service has been so meagre that the department barely provides basic needs such as food, medication and transportation to court for inmates.
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The unauthorised and unfettered infiltration of telephone and Internet services into our prisons is surely a big cause for concern. It underlines the fact that security in our prisons is very porous. This porous nature of the prisons underscores the level of indiscipline, corruption and lack of effective supervision in the Nigerian Prisons system and the urgent need to address this anomaly. It is absolutely condemnable that incarcerated advance fee fraudsters could possess the wherewithal to continue their criminal acts even from the confines of our prisons. Also, the use of communication gadgets- mobile phones and Internet service- by prisoners enhances their capacity to plan and effectively execute jailbreaks. This could endanger the lives of both the prisons, officials and even the inmates.
We recommend an effective monitoring and control of activities and the movement of persons and materials into and out of our prisons, with a view to preventing prisons inmates from having unauthorised access to communication tools that could endanger prisons security. The prisons should afford the prisoners the solitary opportunity of a reflection on a life wrongly applied and the search for a new and more useful life, rather than incline such prisoners to an old and socially reprehensible life.
While we equally acknowledge that inmates of the country’s prisons should not be totally denied of access to information on the trends in the larger society in order to enable them experience a less cumbersome process of integration at the expiry of their prison terms, it is imperative that such access be appropriately controlled and supervised, using methods that cannot be manipulated to achieve improper objectives.
