By Love Wilhelmina Abanonave
The Director-General of the Ghana Prisons Service, Mrs Patience Baffoe-Bonnie, says prisons across the country are currently 23 per cent over-congested, with an inmate population of about 13,000, exceeding the authorised capacity.
According to Mrs Baffoe-Bonnie, the Service is adopting various measures to address congestion across the country’s 49 prison establishments.
She explained that while some facilities are heavily congested, others have lower populations, prompting the Service to occasionally transfer inmates to help balance the numbers.
Mrs Baffoe-Bonnie made the disclosure during a working visit to the Ghana Broadcasting Corporation (GBC) in Accra on Tuesday, September 8, 2026.
She said another major intervention was increased collaboration with justice sector institutions through the Justice for All Programme and related initiatives.
Under the programme, the Police, Judiciary, Legal Aid Commission and Attorney-General’s Department visit prisons across the country to review the cases of remand prisoners and other inmates.
This, she said, had resulted in the release of prisoners who had overstayed their warrants or whose cases had stalled.
She added that public-spirited individuals and organisations also contribute to decongestion by paying fines for inmates who remain in prison because they cannot afford court-imposed fines.
Mrs Baffoe-Bonnie, the first woman to head the Ghana Prisons Service, said the current level of congestion represented a significant improvement from previous years, when overcrowding stood at more than 45 per cent.
At the time, the inmate population exceeded 15,000 against an authorised capacity of 10,265.
During her visit to GBC, Mrs Baffoe-Bonnie also announced the “Think Prisons 360 Degrees” initiative, aimed at opening up the prisons to the public, demystifying prison life and mobilising national support for the reformation and reintegration of inmates.
She said the initiative would give the media, stakeholders and the public first-hand information about conditions in prisons and ongoing reforms.
These include prison farms, which she said currently produce more than 40 per cent of inmates’ daily rations, the expansion of education and vocational training, and the establishment of new camp prisons to help ease congestion.
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