The Director of the Africa Office at the Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative (CHRI), has advocated for the implementation of community sentencing, emphasising its potential benefits for impoverished individuals who find themselves in legal trouble.

In an interview on JoyNews' 'The Law' on Sunday, August 8, Mina Mensah highlighted that community sentencing could mitigate the adverse effects of incarceration on dependents of those sentenced.

“For me, alternative sentencing will be very useful to the poor,” she said, advocating for a system that supports rehabilitation over punishment and considers the broader social impact of incarceration.

Community sentencing, she argued, can also prevent the stigmatisation that often accompanies jail terms, especially for the poor.

"The law is an ass, you might go in there [prison] but you might not necessarily be guilty so you come out and there is stigmatization… the children of the poor are stigmatized when the person is sentenced to a jail term. The family is also stigmatised.

In contrast, she pointed out that wealthier individuals who receive jail sentences often use their resources to maintain their social status, with society quickly forgetting their crimes.

She also criticized the adversarial nature of Ghana’s justice system, where minor financial defaults can lead to disproportionate jail sentences.

“If you can’t pay a fine of 500 cedis and are sentenced to six months, you might not have a job to return to,” she explained.

She emphasised that the lack of segregation in prisons means that minor offenders are housed with hardened criminals, which can lead to the former adopting negative behaviors that further impact their families.