“You know, too, that we have, as a people, given serious consideration to the nature and purpose of punishment for criminal acts. We initiated a countrywide discussion of this issue which led to a consensus that we cannot afford to waste scarce resources building, and equipping, and staffing, and maintaining prisons. A majority of our people agree that imprisonment is a futile response to crime. In Ekem Ferguson’s country, which barely fifty years ago, was the only super-power on this Earth, they had the largest prison population, per capita, in the whole world; and my guess is that they still enjoy that dubious honor. Yet there is no evidence that the practice of imprisonment has reduced the rate of crime.
“We Asante regard crimes committed in our midst as evidence of the malfunctioning
