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Protecting the Human Rights of People with Mental Health Disabilities in African Prisons
From: Colonial Systems of Control
$2.30
It has been argued that the mentally ill are victims of two failed public policies: the failure of public officials to ensure an effective mental health system, and an overly ambitious criminal justice system that tends to send people to prison even for low-level, non-violent crimes. This chapter addresses some of the human rights issues related to having mentally ill persons in prisons.
Contributors
Uju Agomoh
Uju Agomoh has a PhD in criminology and prison studies (University of Ibadan, Nigeria), an MPhil degree in Criminology from the University of Cambridge, England, and an LLB from the University of London (Queen Mary and Westfield College). She is involved in monitoring human rights violations within African penal systems. Her work includes training, research, documentation, and provision of support services to prisoners, ex-prisoners, torture survivors, and their families. She has undertaken prison assessment visits in over 100 prisons in Nigeria, South Africa, The Gambia, and Rwanda. Her work has facilitated training over 5,000 prison guards in good prison practice and international human rights standards for the treatment of prisoners in Ghana and Nigeria. She is the founder and executive director of a human rights non-governmental organization, Prisoners Rehabilitation and Welfare Action (PRAWA), with headquarters in Lagos, Nigeria. She was appointed in July 2000 as a federal comissioner and member of the Governing Council of the National Human Rights Commission in Nigeria. She is the special rapporteur on police, prison, and other centres of detention for the Nigerian Human Rights Commission and a member of the Nigerian Presidential Committee on the Prerogative of Mercy.
