The Lagos State government has banned the arrest by the police of the relatives of the suspects of crime.

Therefore, it is now illegal for any police officer to arrest somebody else (wife, husband, son, brother, sister, co-worker, or neigbour or child etc) in place of a suspect.

This is part of the sweeping reforms introduced by a new criminal law system which the state has just adopted. The reforms reflect a number of landmark reforms aimed at enhancing the efficiency of justice delivery.

The Chief Judge of Lagos State, Justice Adetula Alabi, on Wednesday made this disclosure while briefing newsmen on the new system which takes immediate effect.

Justice Alabi stated that the old Criminal Procedure Law which governed criminal justice has been repealed while a new law, called Administration of Criminal Justice Law, which was passed by the state House of Assembly on March 28, 2007, now regulates criminal proceedings in the state.

The law regulates the procedures of arrest of offenders, detention, prosecution, and imprisonment of offenders. The law also imposes obligations on the police, police prosecutors, courts, defence lawyers, courts, defence attorneys, and the prisons officers.

Under the new system, no appeal is allowed during a criminal prosecution as all applications for stay-of-proceedings of criminal matters have been banned. All appeals have to be filed at end of the cases.

Furthermore, the police now have a duty to inform the AG of any arrest they make every week. A similar reform was introduced on the controversial issue of taking of confessional statements of the accused person, it is now required to be recorded on video.

Quoting from Sections 10 (3) and 9 (3) of the new law, Justice Alabi said ”It has become mandatory that the Attorney-General of the state be informed of all arrests in relation to state offences by the Commissioner of Police every week.

“A data bank is to be created for this purpose in the office of the Attorney-General and Commissioner for Justice”

“The taking of confessional statements shall be recorded on video and produced at the trial and where there is no video facility such confessional statement must be obtained from the suspect in the presence of his legal practitioner.”

Under the new system, indefinite or prolonged remand of the accused person in prison custody has been abolished. A Magistrate can now only remand an accused person in prison custody for a period not exceeding 40 days in the first instance.

If a second order of remand had to be made a good cause must be shown for a second order of remand.

The new law also provides that if a police officer makes any arrest and detention of any person without a warrant, the police should report the arrests and detention to the nearest magistrates.

The magistrate in turn is under the obligation to notify the Chief Magistrate in charge of the magisterial district who shall in turn notify the Chief Registrar of the High Court, who shall forward the report to the Director of Public Prosecution.

The reforms even affect some terminologies used in court. From now on, every charge must be filed with ”The People of the Lagos State” as the prosecution instead of ”The State” that we used at present. The term ”Accused” has also been jettisoned for the term ”Defendant.”

The reference to a magistrate as ”Your Worship” has been abolished. The magistrate are now to be referred to as ”Your Honour”

Another areas of reforms include the formal introduction of plea bargaining into the system of law for the first time. It is now recognized for a prosecutor and the defendant to enter into plea bargaining and sentence bargaining arrangement.

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at least we can now rest from this police and their injustice.