My name is Babalola Adeniyi Abraham, a 500 level clinician from the
University of Abuja Law Clinic. A very peculiar and scintillating part of the
whole pre-trial project was the interaction with detainees.
Interaction with the detainee did so much more to me than just feelings,
it came with light and understanding on the concept of justice, freedom and
mindset or state of mind. As Justice Oputa said "Justice is a three way
thing: Justice for the victim, the accused are for the community "and
indeed this three dimensional view of justice is true justice.
The first thing I observed with the detainees in the course of
interaction is that, family and friends show no hope and at such just try to
forget the persons in prison, however this mindset existing with people of the
class undeserved with justice privileges and rights.
The detainees themselves do not hope or fight it, they just readjust to
prison life and "Cope", many of them for years and still counting.
These helplessness is due to many reasons one, is that the criminal justice actors have
acted according to impulse and not established codes or rules at such reactions
and result always differs , so the sector is not predictable or determinable.
Ignorance and poverty fuels this helplessness as well.
Another thing which struck me is that our prisons might be breeding much
more criminals instead of rehabilitating them, because the prison forces them
to learn survival skills of coping with the hardship of prison confines.
How and why does reaching out to family, lawyer or loved ones become a
problem for detainees?, how does the prison expect inmate to afford to pay for
expensive drugs and other health care bills while behind bars and unable to
contact family or friend with ease?, and these and many more create and build
evil tendencies in the detainees.
The sector only captured "BEHIND BARS", but how about what
happens behind the bar?, the fate and condition of people behind bars?. Answers
to these questions will definitely chunk out the ills of our criminal justice
sector and the alacrity of such situations.
Justice is done to the society as Oputa envisaged because the two things
the sector is meant to give back to the society are lost i.e the hope of a
working and trusted system and A reformed citizen and individual in exchange
for criminals or inmate who go in.
This experience is very much important and unforgettable because it gave
me viable opportunity to use my client counselling and interviewing skills,
lawyering skills, advocacy skills, and other such as knowledge of law.
From my interaction with the detainees and with the revelations that
comes with it, I have come to realize that becoming a socially responsible lawyer
is the goal if we want a society where we can live in true peace and sanity.
The focus and scope of legal practice (course), and law clinic is guided
by problems that has pervaded our criminal justice sector and its actors.
However, I have also come to realize that trainings around values, human
and inter-personal relations, professionalism needs to be a major focus for the
criminal justice actors if justice must be achieved in its totality.
Access to justice gave life to the pool of
knowledge I have acquired over the years as a law student and a clinicians and
that alone makes me grateful for the opportunity.
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