Ghana Prison Officers’ Understanding and Practices of International Human Rights Instruments and Guidelines that Protect the Rights of Prisoners

• Author: Harrison Kwame Golo
• Published date: 01 September 2022
• Date: 01 September 2022
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/00328855221109808

Ghana Prison Officers’

Understanding and

Practices of International

Human Rights

Instruments and

Guidelines that Protect

the Rights of Prisoners

Harrison Kwame Golo

1

Abstract

Research on prison officers’understanding and compliance with the interna-

tional human rights instruments for the protection of prisoners’rights and

guidelines for justice administration remains scanty. Drawing on data from

scenario-based interviews of 24 selected prison officers in the four largest

prison facilities in Ghana, this article seeks to explore how Ghana prison offi-

cers understand and practice these instruments and guidelines that protect

the rights of prisoners. Applying content analysis, the findings reveals that

the overwhelming majority of officer participants in this study did not

have adequate intellectual and practical understanding of these relevant

instruments and guidelines.

Keywords

prison officers, human rights instruments, prisoners’rights, guidelines for

justice administration

1

University of Education, Winneba, Ghana

Corresponding Author:

Harrison Kwame Golo, Centre for Conflict, Human Rights, and Peace Studies (CHRAPS),

University of Education, P.O. Box 25, Winneba, Ghana.

Email: hkgolo@uew.edu.gh

Article

The Prison Journal

2022, Vol. 102(4) 439–457

© 2022 SAGE Publications

Article reuse guidelines:

sagepub.com/journals-permissions

DOI: 10.1177/00328855221109808

journals.sagepub.com/home/tpj

Introduction

Charged with securing the safety of society through the incarceration of those

considered to be most dangerous, prison officers are not only expected to help

reform and rehabilitate those who have offended against the criminal law, but

also to ‘ensure that detention conditions and prison arrangements respect the

dignity of each and every prisoner’(Murdoch & Jiricka, 2016). However,

there have been growing worldwide concern among politicians, governments

and practitioners concerning human rights violations of people deprived of

their liberty by imprisonment or other forms of detention. Consequently,

research on various issues relating to prison management, including, human

rights violations within prisons, has increased over the past decades (see

Murdoch & Jiricka, 2016; Naylor, 2014, 2015; Bartels & Boland, 2016;

Naylor et al., 2014; Tapscott, 2008). However, relatively little work has

been undertaken to examine prison officers’understanding of the relevant

human rights instruments and guidelines that protect the rights of prisoners.

This article thus attempts to go beyond human rights violations suffered by

prisoners (Naylor, 2014) and, instead, explore the prison officers’intellectual

and practical understanding of these relevant international human rights

instruments and guidelines through a scenario-based qualitative research

approach. To recognize the values of dignity, equality and freedom of

every individual, (including prisoners) in the society, as an inherent right,

is to realize the meaning of their shared humanity, and the failure to do so

is to diminish them (Bonabom, 2014).

In this regard, commitment to the protection of the fundamental rights of

persons sentenced to incarceration takes a variety of forms in the United

Nations human rights system that guide states’domestic laws. They

include established specialized human rights instruments, documents, and

mechanisms, some of which are articulated in the Bill of Rights to constitute

the integral part of the general principles of law, and by absorption into

domestic law frameworks of state responsibilities (Bonabom, 2014).

The governments of Ghana have indeed done the needful by signing and/

or ratifying major international treaties, documents, and mechanisms relating

to the promotion and protection of human rights as well as the rule of law.

Among the human rights documents signed and ratified by Ghana are: the

International Convention on Civil and Political Rights, the African Charter

on Peoples’and Human Rights, and the Convention against Torture and

other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment. There are

similar frameworks for the protection of prisoners adopted by the African

Commission, which has been ratified by Ghana. They are; Prevention of

Torture, Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment in Africa

440 The Prison Journal 102(4)