Community-Based Non-Custodial Sentences Under the Cameroon Criminal Justice System and Its Effects on Prisoners’ Rights

Abstract

This paper examines the community-based non-custodial sentences introduced into Cameroon’s criminal justice system by Law No. 2016/007 of 12 July 2016 and their effects on prisoners’ rights. The reform established two types of alternative penalties—community service and reparatory sentences—designed to divert offenders from imprisonment and address the chronic overcrowding that has reduced Cameroon’s prisons to conditions violating fundamental human rights. Through doctrinal legal analysis and examination of international human rights instruments, constitutional provisions, and legislative frameworks, the thesis argues that non-custodial sentences protect prisoners’ rights both directly, by sparing offenders the harmful conditions of detention, and indirectly, by reducing population pressure that exacerbates rights violations for those who remain incarcerated. The analysis reveals, however, a profound gap between legislative provision and operational reality: implementing regulations remain undeveloped, administrative infrastructure unestablished, and judicial practice unchanged eight years after enactment. Despite compelling international recommendations from the Committee Against Torture and the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights urging greater use of alternatives to imprisonment, the promise of non-custodial sentencing remains substantially unfulfilled. The thesis concludes that realizing the potential of community-based sentences requires urgent development of implementing regulations, establishment of supervision mechanisms, and expansion of eligible offences beyond the current restrictive scope of seventy-eight out of approximately two hundred sixty Penal Code provisions.