You are most welcome to the website of HelpLaw Ghana, a charity established to provide free legal services to the poor and less-privileged people of Ghana. We recognize that your visit to our site is not by accident, but rather a conscientious effort to learn about our activities and search for information that would enable you to assess whether there is a dire need to support the provision of free legal services to the poor, deprived, and less-privileged people of Ghana. By the time you have surfed a few of our pages, you will have apprised yourself with an interesting prison situation in Ghana, which shall more than convince you to lend your support to any efforts intended to offer free legal services to the poor, particularly, indigent criminal defendants who are mostly incarcerated due to their inability to hire lawyers to defend them. For some statistics and latest news,

The stark revealing reality of Ghana’s criminal justice system is that except for crimes that attract capital punishment, there is no guarantee for free legal assistance to those who are charged with criminal offences but who are too poor to hire lawyers to defend them. In essence, the system violates Ghana’s own 1992 Constitution and the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights, both of which require that anyone charged with a penal offence must be provided all necessary facilities for his or her defense. The failure of the system has resulted in a terrible congestion in Ghana’s prisons and thereby creating serious human rights issues that have attracted the attention of human rights organizations and Ghana’s international partners. For instance, the Ghana Prisons Records show that as of July 2009, the Nsawam Medium Security Prisons had exceeded its maximum capacity of 851 inmates by over 200% to 2,951 inmates; the Kumasi Central Prison with a maximum capacity of 416 had over 1,678 inmates. Many of the inmates are remand prisoners who are waiting to be prosecuted. Most of them were never brought before any court of law for several years after their first appearance. Out of Nsawam Prison’s 2,951 inmates, more than 1,734 were remand prisoners. For more statistics and News:

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