FACTORS INFLUENCING HIGH RATE OF JAILBREAKS IN CORRECTIONAL CENTERS IN NIGERIA

Abstract

Jailbreak is a menace that poses a significant threat to society’s tranquility and that of the legal system as escapees might pose serious threat to communities and individuals that testified against them in court. This paper is an assessment of the factors that influence high rate of jail breaks in correctional centers in Nigeria, the effect it has on the society and the possible ways to curtail this menace. According to the dictates of the Nigerian law, jailbreak remains an illegal and unlawful act under which an inmate forces his or her way out of the correctional center in a state. The study relied on secondary sources and adopted both Marxian conflict theory and regulatory capture theory as the theoretical frameworks. Factors that influence jail breaks in correctional centers include the ineffectiveness of correctional centers administration, overcrowding of correctional centers, gaps in organizational structure. This paper strongly recommends that information and intelligence gathering by correctional officers should be given serious attention as they help in forestalling jail breaks in Nigeria. Also, covert monitoring should be routinely set up in order to carefully find a balance between inmates’ rights to privacy, insight into serious criminality as well as credible intelligence among inmates.