Lagos Captures Database Of 62,789 Criminals

Kazeem Ugbodaga

The Lagos State Government says it has captured the database of 62,789 suspected criminals that have passed through prisons in the state.

The Attorney General and Commissioner for Justice, Ade Ipaye disclosed this in Lagos, southwest Nigeria, at a ministerial news conference, saying that the suspected criminals were captured under its Crime Data Register, CDR.

He said out of the figure, 40,000 suspected criminals had their biometric and fingerprint details taken.

“Crime Data Register is an electronic repository of information about suspects and offenders who pass through any of the prisons in Lagos State. The CDR involves the participation of all key prosecution actors in the criminal justice process, namely; the Lagos State Judiciary, the Lagos State Ministry of Justice, the Lagos State Command of the Nigeria Police and the Lagos State Command of the Nigeria Prison Service.

“Currently, the CDR is a robust system in terms of its IT infrastructure and functionality. As at the end of January 2014, there are now 62,789 unique records in the system, of which about 40,000 have biometric and fingerprint details,” he said.

Ipaye also said the government is prosecuting 950 criminal cases in various courts across the state and in the nation, disclosing that the Directorate of Public Prosecution, DPP, had  708 cases ongoing in various Superior Courts of record, saying this figure included the cases which were currently being prosecuted at the Court of Appeal and the Supreme Court.

“In addition to these, we are prosecuting 242 cases at the Magistrates’ Courts. All together, the DPP is engaged in the prosecution of 950 criminal cases.  In the past one year, judgments were delivered in 76 cases in various matters the ministry was prosecuting both at the High Court and the Court of Appeal,” he said.

Ipaye added that the DPP, which was created as part of government’s reform of the criminal justice system, had been able to hasten considerably the speed of criminal prosecutions by reducing the time spent on issuing legal advice.

He revealed that in the last one year, out of the 1,440 police investigation files sent to the DPP’s office for legal advice, the unit had already completed work on 1,369 while the rest were still being processed.

“With regard to criminal prosecution, we want to assure the good people of Lagos that our Directorate of Public Prosecutions is committed to ensuring that all offenders are brought to book, thereby discouraging impunity in our society. The Directorate is also committed to speedy trials, especially so that suspects are not detained too long awaiting trial.

“The truism ‘justice delayed is justice denied’ is one of our guiding principles, especially in criminal justice administration. Both the victims of a crime and the alleged offender deserve to have the prosecution completed at the earliest possible time,” he said.

Also, Ipaye revealed that between April 2013 and March 2014, a total of 2,595 offenders were sentenced to various terms of community service across the 12 Magisterial Districts of Lagos State.

He stated that in terms of criminal justice, this number represented those who would have been otherwise incarcerated in prisons with the consequential disruption to their economic, social and family lives.

“Many of the offenders are between the ages of 20 and 40, and are mostly male. In effect, we have succeeded in lowering the prison population without compromising the criminal justice administration system,” he stated.