On the 14th of April 2025, the Lagos State Judiciary launched the Non-Custodial Sentencing Practice Directions 2025[1] which aims to decongest prisons, reduce imprisonment costs, and rehabilitate offenders. This pivots the criminal justice system toward the rehabilitation and reformation of offenders.
The Crisis of Overcrowding
The necessity of this intervention is underscored by a sobering reality. According to Vanguard Newspaper, recent data from the Nigerian Correctional Service, Nigeria’s correctional facilities currently house 81,746 inmates, a figure that drastically exceeds the national capacity of just over 50,000. Perhaps more alarming is that 54,013 of these individuals are awaiting trial, often for serious offenses[2].
Historically, Nigerian courts have routinely defaulted to custodial sentences, even for petty crimes. This “prison-first” approach disproportionately affects the poor, who often end up incarcerated simply because they cannot afford alternative minimum fines. Nigeria faces the persistent challenge of custodial overcrowding, with our correctional centres holding far more individuals than they were built for[3], rendering true correction impossible.
Objective of the Practice Direction.
The 2025 Practice Directions seek to replace this cycle of overcrowding with a restorative model. It implores prevention, restraint, rehabilitation, deterrence, education of public, retribution and restitution[4]. It allows for alternative ways that offenders face punishment while also ensuring rehabilitation and reformation, reducing the cost already incurred by the correctional centre, and promoting rehabilitation. The framework introduces diverse alternatives of sentencing options, including:
- Fines and compensation
- Restitution and probation
- suspended sentence, community service and caution
- Deportation and any other non-custodial sentence as may be imposed by an act of the national assembly or by a law of state[5].
The Practice Directions shall apply to all courts in Lagos State exercising criminal jurisdiction. Despite its noble intent, the Practice Direction faces significant structural and procedural limitations that impact its effectiveness.
Structural Limitations of the Practice Directions
- Inadequate Infrastructure and Supervisory Capacity: While the practice direction identifies these alternatives, the lack of established community service centers and designated work sites leaves offenders with few places to serve their time. This physical deficit is compounded by a scarcity of trained probation officers and social workers, making it nearly impossible to effectively monitor offenders. Without enough personnel to monitor offenders, the risk of absconding remains high, making judges hesitant to utilize these options.
- Funding and Resource Gaps: Implementation requires significant budgetary allocation for electronic monitoring tools where applicable, transportion for supervisors, and the maintenance of a centralized database for tracking offenders. Currently, these resources are often underfunded or non-existent in Lagos State and Nigeria as a whole.
- Institutional Fragmentation: While the Direction encourages collaboration, the independent operation of the Police, the Judiciary, and the Nigerian Correctional Service (NCS) often leads to a breakdown in communication. The NCS remains a federal entity, which can create jurisdictional friction when implementing state level practice directions.
Procedural Limitations of the Practice Directions.
- Monitoring and Reporting Gaps: The Direction provides a framework for imposing sentences but offers limited detail on the procedure for monitoring. It does not strictly define how often reports must be filed or the exact process for re-arresting an offender who breaches the non-custodial terms.
- Exclusion of Minors: The Practice Direction specifically excludes persons under the age of 18. This creates a procedural limit where juvenile offenders must be handled under separate (and often more complicated) Child Rights legislation rather than this streamlined framework.
- Statutory and jurisdictional limits: The Practice Direction is a procedural tool and cannot override substantive law, the criminal justice in Lagos state is overseen and provided for by the Administration of Criminal Justice (Amendment) Law, 2021[6] and other statutes, which prescribe mandatory minimum prison terms. The Practice Direction cannot provide a lesser non-custodial term, limiting the judge’s discretionary power. To do otherwise would be to act ultra vires (beyond legal power), rendering the sentence liable to be set aside on appeal.
Section 274 of the 1999 Constitution of Nigeria[7] empowers the Chief Judge of a state to make rules for regulating the practice procedures of the High Court of a state. However, in Buhari v. Inec[8] the Supreme Court held that in the hierach of our jurisprudence, practice directions come last in terms of authority in area of conflict. Where there is conflict between an enabling statute and practice direction, the former will prevail[9].
Consequently, this limitation suggests that for the Practice Direction to be truly transformative, it cannot stand alone. Ultimately, the Practice Direction provides the framework for rehabilitation, but the Substantive Law provides the permission.The Lagos State House of Assembly must review the ACJL and other statutes to remove or soften mandatory minimums for non-capital offenses, explicitly granting judges the power to default to the Practice Direction’s options.
The Need for Binding Appellate Guidelines
To truly institutionalize these alternatives, Lagos State must move beyond directions toward binding appellate guidelines. Binding guidelines from the appellate courts would provide the necessary legal weight to ensure consistency, compel state investment in infrastructure, and offer judges the legal cover needed to favor rehabilitation over incarceration.
Only by bridging the gap between legislative intent and administrative capacity can Lagos move from a system of “warehousing” people to one of genuine correction and social reintegration. Only through a unified front of legislative amendment, binding appellate guidelines, and robust funding can Lagos transform its correctional system from a revolving door of overcrowding into a genuine engine of social correction and justice.
