A human rights advocacy group, Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative (CHRI), has called for reforms in punishment for minor offences other than the current jail term punishment.

Currently, in Ghana’s laws, minor or misdemeanor offences such as hawking, sanitation offences, disobeying traffic regulations, etc are punishable by law through fines or imprisonment of not less than three years.

Speaking on The Pulse on Wednesday, Project Officer for CHRI, Anthony Sedzro, said the jail terms for these petty offences are unfair to poor people who he says are the major victims but may not be able to settle the fines.

He noted that there must be alternative punishment for offenders of minor offences other than jail terms if, for one reason or the other, they cannot settle their fines.

“What we have seen over the years is that a large number of people are in prison just because they are poor and vulnerable…many of these offenders are the poor and marginalised who find it difficult to pay the fines and so if they are unable to pay the fine they go to prison and that is why our coalition is pursuing this agenda,” he stated.

He said such offences must be decriminalized from Ghana’s laws.

According to him, Ghana’s prisons are over choked and do not achieve the core mandate of reforming offenders.

“In Ghana currently, our prisons are overcrowded by 52 per cent and so many people in prisons they go into prisons and go and meet hardened criminals, people who have committed serious crimes and they are trained to commit serious crimes.

"We are saying that some of these people, it is because of poverty. Majority of Ghanaians belong to the poor class…we are saying that there must be alternatives. For instance, if a driver parks at the wrong side of the road, why don’t you let him sweep or weed,” he noted.