This blog is managed by the content creator and not GhanaWeb, its affiliates, or employees. Advertising on this blog requires a minimum of GH₵50 a week. Contact the blog owner with any queries.
It should worry anyone who cares about fairness and the rule of law that Circuit Courts in Ghana are jailing people for up to 15 years — and sometimes more. In a recent fraud case, a Circuit Court handed down a 15-year custodial sentence. The crime may have been serious, but so is the concern: should a lower-tier court, structurally limited in judicial depth and procedural rigour, wield such power over a person’s liberty?
This is not a question of sympathy for criminals. Fraud, especially the type that ruins livelihoods and exploits public trust, must be punished. But the severity of punishment should be commensurate not only with the offence, but with the quality of judicial process involved. That is where Ghana’s justice architecture seems misaligned.
Circuit Courts are inferior courts by design. They are meant to handle intermediate criminal and civil matters, not life-altering verdicts with generational consequences. Their limited jurisdiction, constrained resources, and often hurried caseloads make them ill-suited for the level of scrutiny required in long-term sentencing.
Other democracies impose clear caps on what lower courts can do. Five years is a common maximum sentence in comparable jurisdictions. Anything beyond that is transferred to a superior court — one equipped with broader legal tools, a higher evidentiary threshold, and stronger appeal mechanisms. Why, then, are Ghana’s Circuit Courts being allowed to play High Court?
And what does this mean for public confidence in the judiciary? At a time when trust in institutions is fragile, it is dangerous to allow such heavy sentencing in courts that many view as more vulnerable to external influence and internal pressures. A 15-year sentence should not be delivered without the full weight of judicial process, ideally from the High Court or above.
This isn’t merely a procedural gripe. It’s a constitutional and moral imperative. Sentencing is one of the most coercive tools the state holds. It must be guarded with due process, not dispensed in courts where access to robust legal defence is not guaranteed, and where the line between justice and expediency can too easily blur.
There’s also the matter of consistency. In Ghana, someone can receive a 15-year sentence from a Circuit Court for financial crime, while another convicted of a more grievous offence in a superior court may serve less. That dissonance isn’t just unfair — it is institutionally corrosive.
We must ask: Is the goal to secure justice or simply to punish?
If justice is the objective, then sentencing powers must be harmonised with judicial capacity. Ghana’s judiciary would do well to follow a simple principle:
No Circuit Court should be allowed to impose a custodial sentence beyond five years.
Let the High Court — with its constitutional standing, appellate structures, and broader scrutiny — take over where higher punishment is warranted.
The issue here is not whether to punish crime, but how to do it justly, transparently, and in proportion to the crime in which the accused stands trial. Justice must be consistent, not arbitrary. Structured, not capricious. Measured, not overstretched.
Anything else invites quiet injustice in the name of swift retribution.
By Charles McCarthy
