The Comptroller of Osun State Correctional Service, Mr. Tolu Ogunsakin has lamented the congestion at the correctional centres. He stressed the need to decongest them.
He spoke while presenting the record of the inmates in the Ilesa correctional facility to the Attorney General and Commissioner of Justice, Hon Jimi Bada and his team who visited the centre to aessss the facilities housing the inmates.
The Attorney General was at the Ilesa Correctional Center in company of the Solicitor General and Permanent Secretary, Ministry of Justice Mrs. Adekemi Bello and other management staff during the visit.
Ogunsakin presented the record of the inmates in the Ilesa correctional facility to the Attorney General and his team after conducting them around the facility.
He disclosed that the Ilesa correctional centre is currently overcrowded, saying that the facility has the capacity of 586 inmates, but it is currently accommodating 766 inmates.
He explained that it has become necessary to decongest the correction centre as it has become overcrowded just as he requested for logistics support for the Correctional Service in the State.
The Deputy Comptroller of Ile-ife correctional facility, DCP Olorunfemi Obembe, who welcomed the team, also disclosed that the facility which is 160 inmates capacity is currently accommodating 346 inmates, adding that just 44 inmates were convicted while 302 inmates are awaiting trial.
However, during the interaction session with inmates at the Ile-Ife correctional facility, the Attorney General paid off a fine of N150,000 levied against one underaged inmate (name withheld), a child of broken marriage, who was a scavenger before he was arrested for stealing wasted iron and subsequently sentenced to three years’ imprisonment by the Magistrate Court.
The Attorney General expressed worry that the prisons had remained congested owing to a huge number of inmates who are awaiting trial.
Ogunsakin appreciated the Attorney General’s gesture and called on other public office holders and philanthropists to emulate the good gesture of the Commissioner for Justice.
He also urged the public to adopt the plea bargain option, saying that it is a modern way to decongest the Prison.
