SAINT-AYISI SAMUEL

The Writer Restitution is the ordering of a court of payment of money or the return of property found to have been stolen by the accused person. A judge in a criminal case could only make restitution orders against an accused person. Section 146 of Act 30, therefore, provides that where a person is convicted of having stolen or having obtained property fraudulently or by false pretences, the Court convicting that person may order that the property or a part of the property be restored to the person who appears to the Court to be entitled to it. And so in The Republic v Circuit Court Judge Hohoe; Ex Parte Atalu and Another , the High Court in quashing the purported restitution orders of the Circuit Court held that restitution orders could only be made against convicted persons and not against strangers to the criminal charge. However, with the passage of the Criminal Procedure Code (Amendment) (No.2) Act, 1964 (Act 254), a number of inroads have been made in the law of rest...

Writer Under the criminal justice system, a crime is regarded as an offence against the state and not the victim. The state steps into the shoes of the victim and prosecutes the offender. In the end, the state focuses on punishing the offender to either pay a fine to the state or commit the offender to a prison term. There is very little or  no attention to the needs of the victim, hence leaving the victim unsatisfied, impoverished and bitter. In view of this challenge, there are other alternative methods of settling criminal disputes outside the traditional criminal justice system. One of such methods is the victim-offender mediation. Victim offender mediation aims at restoring damaged or broken relationships between an offender and a victim by providing both parties an opportunity to meet face to face to address their differences through mediation. This is also called transformative justice or restorative justice. It enables parties to settle their disputes without going...