Supreme Court justice recommends jail for police officers, judges as part of training

• Justice Yonny Kulendi has expressed his reservations about aspects of the justice delivery system

• He has made some proposals which he believes could shape the system

• He has urged police, judges and prisons officers to be diligent in the execution of their duties

Justice Emmanuel Yonny Kulendi, a judge of the Supreme Court has recommended

Read full articlethat spending some time in prison should be incorporated in the training of stakeholders in the justice delivery system.

This, he believes will shape their understanding of the system and positively impact their delivery of justice.

Speaking at a forum by the Ghana Case Tracking System (CTS) on Thursday, August 12, 2021, Justice Yonny Kulendi noted that his proposal will hand the stakeholders the experience needed to execute their duties.

“I think if anyone is going to play [a role] in the criminal justice system, in the cause of their training, the system should have some orchestrated built-in process that will cook up their running into problems with the law,” the Supreme Court judge suggested at a forum on Thursday, August 12.

“If you’re a policeman, you are put into a cell for 48hours then after, when you’re managing [others], your disposition to the people who come here will be different. It will change,” he said in answer to a question.

“The same goes for the judge or magistrate that in the cause of the training, we should orchestrate a system where you get remanded and put into prison for one week. When you come back, the first thing you will appreciate is that the custodial facilities were not meant as a marketplace and so it is not meant for everyone who visits the police station or court,” he noted.

Endorsing the CTS, Justice Kulendi noted that “it’s always a human attitude” to reach for the most extreme punitive actions “and that is why we need a digital intervention because it makes the justice delivery process transparent”.

Justice Yonny Kulendi further disclosed his reservations about some aspects of the justice delivery system.

“It is the people who have an interface with the criminal process [who should be blamed]. For instance, a person can be charged and granted bail…but the court will say go and bring two civil servants who earn more than GHC15,000 and all kinds of things. Instead of the judge to say go home on self-recognizance bail, the judge will impose conditions that you can never meet and that is not a problem with the law, it is a human problem.

“I mean, you walk to the police station yourself and when you get there you become a prisoner. Because we are just mean-spirited, [we] like power and lack [neighbourliness] because if you won’t want that to be done to you or your sister or brother, you won’t do that to anybody,” he concluded.