A good number of Cameroonians cannot seek justice while many are those who are caught up in the dragnets of the judicial system of the country for lack of money and the consequences are enormous, such as unnecessary and unlimited stay in detention.
In every society with some legal protections, people who lack the resources for, or access to the legal system are often denied these safeguards for one reason or the other. It is estimated that four billion people around the world do not enjoy the protections afforded by law. The poorest and most vulnerable instead live at risk, for they are often exploited by corrupt officials or local power-brokers who use money or force to achieve their personal or individual goals.
When poor communities cannot seek justice for their grievances, the resulting anger can spill over into violence. If serious progress is ever going to be achieved in overcoming extreme poverty, the poor must enjoy the rule of law and functioning institutions of justice otherwise money will continue to flow towards the powerful.
In Cameroon, the situation is not too different from that elsewhere.
Geraldine is a 21 year old girl, a single mother, school dropout who lives in a one room apartment in Yaoundé precisely at Essos, a locality in the Yaoundé V Sub Division of the Mfoundi Division, Centre Region of Cameroon. She was attacked on by some four young boys armed with locally made weapons on the night of 26 breaking 27 of October 2019 as she returned from a party. Her handbag containing a telephone, national identity card, and the sum of 75.000 FCFA was taking away by the hoodlums at knife-point. All her cries for neighbors to intervene and rescue her were to no avail and she was left with herself to cry.
It was with tears that she explained to us her situation as we tried to investigate how the judicial system in Cameroon contributes to the well being of the vulnerable poor and common man in the society.
Her story is pathetic and in this report you shall discover how a good number of Cameroonians are victims of the judicial system because of their financial status. It is not just an unfortunate situation but a common practice in the country. We shall towards the end present to you finding we obtained in trying to seek the way forward to the situation.
When Geraldine explained her ordeal the next morning to her friends, all of them advised her to drop a complaint at the nearest police station which she did presenting details of the alleged thieves one of whom she recognized as living in the same quarter with her. Her expectations were that the officers would help arrest the alleged thief for interrogation; little did she know that the journey would be a very tedious one.
The nursing mother was asked to pay a sum of two thousands francs for convocation to be prepared and given to her to deliver to the suspect, or round the money up to five thousands if she would prefer that it be delivered by the security forces. Though she has just lost 75.000 FCFA and her child was not feeling too well, Geraldine had to burrow five thousand francs and give the officer for she was afraid to deliver the convocation herself.
She went to the police station the day the suspect was convoked but was alone and as she tried to find out if the convocation was duly handed, the answer was a yes but the aleged thief did not show up. The officers then proposed to her to look for fuel so that he and some policemen could go and arrest the suspect directly from his house very early the next morning that is October 30, 2019.
She was astonished when the amount proposed to her for the exercise was 25.000 FCFA. At first thought, she immediately rejected the offer with reasons that her financial situation cannot permit her any longer given that her child was actually suffering from malaria and she had to burrow the convocation fee adding to the 75.000 FCFA stolen which she doubts can be recovered. But giving a second thought to her initial decision she opted to burrow 25.000 FCFA with hopes that the culprit will refund everything. All efforts to obtain the amount from friends and family turned futile and that is how she had not only to abandon the affair, but had indebted herself just because she could not foot the “judicial bills” to recover her dues.
Unlike Geraldine, many other Cameroonians are going through such situations because of poverty and most at times as a result of non respect of the law by some law enforcement officers who use their position to extort money especially from the poor and those ignorant of the law.
In this reports all efforts to get the reactions from the concerned judicial officers were to no avail but the law in Cameroon addresses all of our worries.
Talking about laws in this case, the penal code in Cameroon is clear on issues of complaints and according to barrister Vugah Elvis, lawyer with the Cameroon bar council, all convocations are issued free of charge and the law enforcement officers are charged with delivery to the destined person(s). From his explanations it is evident that the investigator in the case of Geraldine had negative and corrupt intentions, and that is one of the ways how the poor in the country suffer from the judicial system. This is not the only case to illustrate how the judicial system in Cameroon greatly affects the wellbeing of the poor and the vulnerable pushing them to go through huddles in seeking justice.
The public perception of the poor is often negative; many see the poor as lazy or seeking to game the system. While that may be true in some very minute cases (just as such people exist everywhere across the world) the blame is unfair. Being born into poverty automatically limits the chances of your economic success. Others are pushed into poverty by some factors which could include the judicial system as we have seen with the case of Geraldine.
In Cameroon today, many people especially those who commit minor offense are jailed just for being poor. A police officer who preferred to stay anonymous hinted us that in their station, a group of two (2) students who molested the daughter of their school principal spent six (6) days at their station and was finally sent to court just because they couldn’t afford to post bail, and still more are locked up because they can’t pay their debt to the court, sometimes for things as minor as unpaid rents.
The issue of bail in Cameroon has actually become a veritable instrument to nail the poor and prevent them from seeking justice in one way or the other. In the case we just presented above, the investigation officers were demanding 100.000 FCFA from the two (2) students, which is 50.000 FCFA each. Reports hold it that the parents of the kids who happened to be hawkers in Yaoundé, the capital of the Republic of Cameroon could not afford the requested amount because they are from poor backgrounds.
The judicial system in Cameroon has made is easy for officers to oppress the poor when it comes to bail because no fixed amount is specified in the penal / criminal procedure code. The amount is left at the discretion of the law enforcement officer when the case is not yet in court or the presiding judge if it is already in court.
According to the criminal procedure code in its article 224 (1) under sub chapter II on conditional bail, any person remanded in custody maybe granted bail on the condition that he fulfills one of the conditions referred to in section 246 (g) in particular to ensure his appearance either before the judicial police of any judicial authority.
To better understand the legal terms we caught up with a legal mind, barrister Vugah Elvis who gave us the following explanations;
“let me address the issues seriatim as raised, bail generally speaking is free and an accused who is brought before the judicial police or any other judicial officer is presumed innocent and should therefore be granted bail as a right if (s)he is able to fulfils the conditions set forth in article 246(g) of the criminal procedure code. Talking about the conditions, (s)he could either be ordered to make a financial deposit especially when (s)he is not resident within the jurisdiction of the court (where the person is being detained) or can be granted bail for surety. In the latter case, the surety can only forfeit the amount entered in the recognizance if the accused fails to show up when needed. No fixed amount is therefore charged for bail especially at the court of first instance where minor offenses are treated and the amount is left at the discretion of the court or judicial officer in charge. The court’s discretion will be guided by the nature of the offense, the financial status of the accused and the amount involved (if it had to do with financial crimes). It is usual and common that litigants are often demanded to pay some amount upon being granted bail which may range from 25 000 – 50 000 FCFA and even 100 000 FCFA in some rare cases. I insist that the law does not recognize such amounts but many at times those who charge them argue that the amount is used for paying auxiliary judicial fees and for other repairs just as PTA levy is taxed in schools.”
From the explanations above, one thing is clear, poor citizens whose crimes are minor caught up in such situations and who are not lucky may never be granted bail. One very important factor that most people are ignorant of and which affects the poor greatly is the fact that the bail caution is refundable but in reality an example of a refunded bail caution at the end of the investigation or judicial procedure is very difficult to find. When this happens to the poor it is not good news for innocent victims after judicial proceedings will have become poorer.
It should be noted that in Cameroon when a poor person is dealing with a wealthy person in a judicial affair it is likely that the case which could be handled at the level of the judicial police station could be sent to court, and there, the challenges continue. At the level of the court the situation is even more complicated because besides the issue of bail there is another canker worm which is to obtain the services of a lawyer.
Experience has shown that lawyers in Cameroon most a times do not consider the poor or the vulnerable because they too still go through the same process to obtain the services of a legal mind. For those who cannot even afford the services of the “cheapest” lawyer, the state is responsible for providing them with one, but it is rarely the case in the country.
The criminal procedure code has laid down provisions for this and the explanations are clear according to our legal mind. He says with respect to this aspect, for someone to benefit from the provisions of a state / government lawyer, which is legally referred to as “legal aid”, the accused must be standing trial for offenses known as felonies attracting prison terms of more than ten (10) years and pending before the High Court or Military Court. Such an accused must however show that he is impecunious and cannot pay for legal services. If the offense attracts a death penalty it becomes a must for the accused to prove his impecunious state. In both cases the judge appoints a lawyer to defend the accused.
Another Angle
The issue of the poor and the judicial system in Cameroon is very complex to an extent that courts are even sending people to jail because they could not pay their debts while it is very common to see most detainees in prison who have completed their jail terms but are still not liberated because they do not have money to pay court bills or other damages identified during the judicial proceedings. This is mere jail for poverty.
Even if you are sued for unpaid civil debt, you cannot be sent to jail for non-payment of that debt, the common option is for you to sign an undertaking on how you would pay the debt. But the poor are not always considered in such provisions since the conception is that they may never raise the amount to pay, so the best pressure to put on them is to send them to jail for their families to react, and this is not welcomed in the judicial system especially in a country like Cameroon which is proud of its status as a state of law.
However, there are other circumstances where jail-time is a real possibility, not paying your taxes for instance, because taxes are supposed to be paid by both the rich and the poor. The rules are always different when it comes to government’s money.
Punishment is the infliction of an unpleasant or negative experience on an offender in response to an offense. In ancient times, the sole purpose of punishment was retribution. However, in more modern societies the objectives of punishment include deterrence, retribution, incapacitation, rehabilitation and reparation.
When judgments are passed in Cameroon, the jail term is often accompanied with financial damages to be paid by the detainee either to the court or to the complainant. And failure to do so will warrant them more stay in prison and the number of extra years depend on the amount in question.
Most people who are sentenced for unpaid debts or the poor are more likely to stay in jail longer than the slammed jail term because they may likely not have money to pay the court or complainant at the end of their jail term.
We may not have official statistics of such persons in Cameroon but a visit to the Yaoundé Central Prison in Kondengui in 2017 made us to understand from the inmates themselves that a good number of prisoners there have completed their jail terms but are blocked by the financial damages owed especially the state. We were presented an inmate called Roland who was slammed a fifteen (15) year jail term and a financial damage of two (2) million CFCFA to pay to the state or would be compelled to spend extra one (1) year in jail. Roland was actually in his 18 year in jail, after haven completed the 15 years jail term slammed on him at the level of the court plus the extra 1 year which was a condition for him not paying the financial damage of two (2) million FCFA. Unfortunately for him, he could not raise the said amount while in jail owing to the “harsh” detention conditions where “petit” economic opportunities are very limited or practically absent.
That is not even the issue; the vexing part of it is that he had been abandoned by prison officials for lack of follow up according to the prisoners who told us that rarely do officials come in to verify such prisoners and pressed for their liberation. The few cases that exist are seen with those who though poor have educated family members who can from time to time intervene on their behalf. Our attempts to get the reaction of the prison authorities at that time were to no avail.
There are also many cases like that of Roland which have now raised the question of why should the poor suffer a whole lot in the judicial process in Cameroon? Incarceration is very necessary for as an objective of punishment, it seeks to remove the offender from the society for the good of the society and should go side by side with reparation.
As such, a rapist for example is incarcerated to protect other members of the society from such a person and to give the offender time to pay for his crimes to the society. If a person is incarcerated in a prison where access to source of money is a major concern, then it becomes pretty difficult for the offender to pay the financial damages to the state or the civil party, and the situation is even worse if the offender is of the vulnerable poor class.
The present judicial reparation system in Cameroon is a call for concern, since vulnerable poor population who are supposed to be protected by the state instead suffer from the system.
The Way Forward
The way forward Out of 100 cameroonians we interviewed in Yaounde, Polittical capital of Cameroon, 99 of them are of the opinion that it is not good news sending someone to jail because of poverty to pay for the established bills and sometimes artificial bills. they did not hesistate to present what they think is the best option….
Experts believe that the collective interest of prisons as instruments of justice should be to promote and not to undermine, society’s aspiration for a fair distribution of rights, resources, and opportunities. The legal and political theory of punishment in Cameroon is most often silent on the social context in which criminal behavior arises making it look like a state-sanctioned blaming of offenders for moral failure.
Rehabilitation as an objective of punishment seeks to reform offenders by helping them conform to the standard of society and rehabilitative criminal justice tools are parole, probation and work release. Justice should be served by the equal treatment of suspects, defendant, and the incarcerated irrespective of their financial status.
The equation of justice with equal treatment is striking since the authorities deal overwhelmingly with the poor. It is becoming challenging for the government of Cameroon to explore other avenues, think differently about how to punish the vulnerable poor population.
The idea of a debtor’ prison is welcomed by most Cameroonians. A debtors’ prison is a prison for people who are unable to pay debts. It is a common way to deal with unpaid debt. Accused persons unable to pay their debts could rather be placed in such prisons than taken to prisons where we have murderers, hardened criminals and gangsters.
Destitute persons who were unable to pay a court-ordered judgment would be incarcerated in these prisons until they have worked off their debt via labor or secured outside funds to pay the balance. The product of their labor would go towards both the costs of their incarceration and their accrued debt. With this, the government would be doing great services to the vulnerable poor population.
Another major service that the government can do to the vulnerable poor population would be to effectively control the entire judicial system so that some unscrupulous judicial officers should not profit and use their positions to render the poor poorer by not rendering justice accordingly.
The laws of Cameroon to a greater extent are clear on some vital issues which if duly respected by law enforcement officers in the country especially in the judicial system, the vulnerable poor population would not have issues to complain about because as we have seen from most of the laws and explanations from our legal mind, justice is free of charge in Cameroon and the government is to assist the poor in every step of the judicial proceedings
