Journal of Law and Criminal Justice

Time to Reform Nigeria’s Criminal Justice System
Tosin Osasona

Abstract
This paper examines the performance of Nigeria’s criminal justice system, using quantitative and qualitative indicators. An effective criminal justice system is one of the key pillars upon which the concept of the rule of law is built because it serves as a functional mechanism to redress grievances and bring violators of social norms to justice, and how well a country manages its criminal justice system affects its overall performance on the governance index. Unfortunately, the Nigerian criminal justice system is fundamentally flawed and the defects manifest at every processing point on the entire criminal justice system line. This paper finds that the failure of governance institutions to design a suitable criminal justice policy, the inability of the legislature to appropriately transform policies into laws, an oddly designed judicial system, an outdated and counterproductive style of policing and a correctional services that inhumanely warehouses those considered ‘innocent’ by the very law of the society that imprisons them are the factors that have collectively rendered the system out of sync with contemporary global best practices in criminal justice system administration.

Full Text: PDF     DOI: 10.15640/jlcj.v3n2a7