Locked Away and Forgotten: Examining Symbolic and Social Impacts of Death Sentence Penalties on Death Row Inmates in Ghana

Keywords: Prisoner, Transfer, "Death Row", Ghana, Abolition
Abstract Type: Paper Abstract

Abstract

There is a well-established international call to abolish the death penalty, often argued from a human rights perspective as established in treaties such as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. Although Ghana is a signatory to these treaties, the country’s constitution (Articles 3 and 72) has established the death penalty as a mandatory punishment for certain crimes, such as murder and treason. Since 1993, however, not a single death row inmate has been executed, rendering the sentence largely symbolic. Despite this, the death penalty’s impacts on prisoners and their family members cannot be overlooked. Through examination of how the death penalty impacts Ghanaian prisoners’ trajectories and social support networks, this paper argues for the death penalty sentence to be ended altogether, not simply left unused. Drawing on interviews with 12 death row inmates selected from my PhD research on Ghana’s prison system, I identify two significant themes that impact the condemned prisoner: Firstly, those with a death sentence are often transferred long distances away from their families which makes continued contact difficult, and secondly, family members retreat emotionally from those they assume will be killed imposing a kind of ‘social death’ on the prisoner. Ghana’s death penalty, then, not only violates human rights principles (i.e. the right to life) but also fundamentally alters and disintegrates families. The paper concludes by considering how transferring prisoners between spaces can contribute to abolishing the death sentence.