Procedural Fairness in Justice Adjudication of Motor Traffic Offences in Cape Coast Metropolis, Ghana

Abstract

The kind of treatment people receive in court is of more concern to most people than winning or losing a particular case. Though many traffic offences end up in court, studies concerning satisfaction of victims from literature reveal the area has not been proportionately researched into generally in Ghana, and particularly in the Cape Coast Metropolis. This study therefore looks at the degree of satisfaction among drivers who have been found culpable of traffic offences and have been tried in the law court, with reference to the six basic elements of procedural fairness, viz. neutrality, publicity, voice, respect, time and trust. Though the target population was 246 the purposive sampling method was employed to sample 41 subjects. A questionnaire and interview schedule was used. Chi-square, cross-tabulations, skewness, frequencies, percentages and tables were employed as descriptive tools using Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) software package, version 21, for the analysis. The study revealed skewness of responses rangeing between 0.241 and 1.287 with the exception of ‘’period within which adjudication ended” and “publicity of judgment of traffic offences in general’’ which were -0.13 and --0.806 respectively. Aggregate responses showed that about 56 percent had very low satisfaction level; 39 percent low; and 4.9 percent high satisfaction levels. The paper therefore recommends that stakeholders should holistically and aggressively organize education programs such as conferences, forums, colloquia, workshops and seminars for court officials to deal with the judicial procedural fairness challenge in the Metropolis.

Keywords: court; fair; neutrality; publicity; respect; trust; voice.