Mental health issues in Nigerian prisons

A prison, correctional facility, penitentiary or jail is a
facility in which inmates are forcibly confined and
denied a variety of freedoms under the authority of the
State, as a form of punishment.
The most common use of prisons is as part of a
criminal justice system in which individuals officially
charged with or convicted for crimes are confined to a
prison until they are either brought to trial to determine
their guilt or complete the period of incarceration they
were sentenced to after being found guilty during their
trial.
The beginning of prisons can be traced back to the rise
of the State as a form of social organisation, which
coincided with the development of the written language
that helped in the creation of formalised legal codes as
official guidelines for the society. The penalties for
violations of these laws were almost exclusively centred
on the concept of retaliation found in legal codes of
early civilisation. A variety of existing structures were
used to house prisoners, such as metal cages,
basements of public buildings and quarries. Forced
labour in public projects and varying terms of slavery
were commonly associated with prisoners.
Every society has always had its own criminal justice
system, with a provision of prison system to
accommodate offenders. Long before the colonial
masters came, Africans had developed their own
traditional criminal justice, with the prisons usually
located near the palaces.
The possession of the right and the capability to
imprison citizens, however, granted an air of legitimacy
to officials at all levels of government – from kings to
village heads. The colonial masters merely built on the
system they met on ground by improving on the state
of the accommodation.
The colonial masters used some of these facilities as
asylums for offenders who resisted colonialism and
banished them under the guise of some mental illness
without proper clinical assessment and treatment plan.
This actually illustrates the precarious relationship
between correctional facilities and mental health.
Two major theories have dominated the development of
the prison system, namely the theory of deterrence that
makes the prison a harsh place in order to deter people
from committing crime out of fear of going to prison;
and the rehabilitation or moral theory, which is based
on the religious ideas that equated crime with sin and
views the prison as a place to instruct prisoners in
moral lessons, obedience and proper behaviour.
The later reformers affirm that prisons could be
managed as humane institutions of moral instructions
where the prisoners’ behaviour could be corrected to
become models of good behaviour when they are
released. They could be initiated members of the
society.
Long years of military rule had negatively affected the
development of our prison system, where they had
functioned as mere facilities of repression, especially for
those tagged as political offenders. However, the
challenges of a democratic 21st Century Nigeria
prescribes that our prison system must be managed in
a way that will enhance mental capital development.
In a country with decades of substantial oil earnings
still parading more than 80 per cent of her population
living below poverty line, we should prepare for a strong
prison system to cater for those who may react against
oppression by the few thieving elites, while it should
also serve as an avenue to reform the megalomaniac
political office holders.
It is empirically established that unemployment, poor
housing and poverty are responsible for the increased
violation of our legal codes, leading to the
overpopulation of our prisons. These factors are,
paradoxically, associated with the development of
mental health disorders.
In the United States, for instance, there are about 2.2
million persons in prisons, among whom there is a
higher percentage of the mentally ill than in the
psychiatric hospitals.
A systematic review of 62 surveys of the incarcerated
population from 12 western countries shows that the
men have about 3.7 per cent psychosis, 10 per cent
depression, 65 per cent having personality disorder, with
47 per cent of them with the antisocial type.
Among the women prisoners, four per cent have
psychosis, 12 per cent depression, 42 per cent have
personality disorders and about 70 per cent of the total
inmates have primary or co-existing cases of
substance abuse. Unfortunately, barely one in three ever
gets identified or treated, even in such developed
climes. Mental health is, therefore, at the centre of any
effective prison reform programme.
As much as we are culturally wired in the direction of
punishment rather than reformation, mental health
issues certainly underlie most cases of imprisonment,
either as a political office holder embezzling millions of
funds meant for constructing bridges and roads; or the
vagrant miscreants, economically displaced and
homeless that have to resort to antisocial activities to
survive. They all need a robust mental health-based
rehabilitation programme.
I am not certain the Nigerian prison authority can boast
two consultant psychiatrists; and like to query how
much of mental health training is included in the
training of our prison workers.