1.1 INTRODUCTION
In a real-life experience, it is technically proposed that as any system gets congested, the service delay in the system increases. A good understanding of the relationship between congestion and delay is essential for designing effective congestion control algorithms. Queuing Theory provides all the tools needed for this analysis.(Obioha, 1995) The growing of crime in the society has led to increase in waiting time and overcrowding in Nigerian prison yards. Long waiting time of inmates in any prison is considered as an indicator of poor quality and needs improvement.Managing inmates awaiting trial create a great dilemma for prison wardens seeking to improve condition of inmates on daily basis. (Adetule et al, 2010).
Prison is an institution designed to secure house for people who have been convicted of crimes. These individuals, known as prisoners or inmates, are kept in continuous custody on a long-term basis. Individuals who commit the most serious crimes are sent to prison for one or more years; the more serious the offense, the longer the prison term imposed. For certain crimes, such as murder, offenders may be sentenced to prison for the remainder of their lifetime. When individuals are accused of violating criminal law, they are tried in a court and either convicted or acquitted. A person who is convicted is then sentenced—that is, assigned a specific punishment. The sentence may involve fines, probation, or incarceration.
There is a term that has assumed the currency of serious discussions whenever the issue of Prison Reforms comes up for mention in recent times. That issue is Prison Congestion. I have come to view the pre-eminence of the term with fear because so many people who use the term do not really appreciate its implication for Prisons and indeed Criminal Justice Sector Reforms. This project will be the best place to agree on what is Prison Decongestion and determine the appropriateness of the of computer application as a tool for the Reform of Prisons. (Normal, 1998)
Decongestion simply means to evacuate, to reduce the volume or numbers in a space. The Farlex Outline dictionary defines decongestion as the reduction in the volume of contents or numbers in an existing space. When applied to the Prisons it means measures designed to reduce the number of prisoners in the prisons system.
One can note from the phrase, “convicted of crimes” when talking about prisons. Prison is supposed to be a house for convicted criminals, which implies people who are not yet found guilty in court judgments are not meant to be housed in a prison. In Nigeria today the real definition of the word prison as seen from the universal concept is not applicable because what we have is a houseful of suspects (inmates awaiting trial). Most inmates remain in the prison for years without even presenting their case before the court of law. Problems arise from several reasons such as injustice, missing records, placing superiority over one inmate than the other, etc. All rest on the inability to invent digital means of keeping track of how these inmates arrived at the prison gates before themselves.
Queuing theory is the mathematical study of waiting lines. The theory enables mathematical analysis of several related processes, including arriving at the (back of the) queue, waiting in the queue (essentially a storage process), and being served at the front of the queue. The theory permits the derivation and calculation of several performance measures including the average waiting time in the queue or the system, the expected number waiting or receiving service, and the probability of encountering the system in certain states, such as empty, full, having an available server or having to wait a certain time to be served. (Obioha, 1995)
This theory will be applied in letting the prison wardens easily be notified about how long an inmate has stayed without being judged, the maximum time an inmate is to stay in the prison awaiting trial, alert on the congestion level of the prison so as to easily make the government decide on whether to free inmates waiting trail for too long, etc.
1.2 STATEMENTS OF THE PROBLEM
The problem meant to be tackled at the end of this project is significance decrease in the rate of congestion in Nigerian prisons. Queue theory has been seen to work effectively in electronic traffic control units, healthcare centres, telecommunications and many areas; this is why it is thought as an additional functionality to ordinary record keeping spreadsheet found in prisons across Nigeria.
1.3 AIM AND OBJECTIVES
The aim of this project is to apply queuing theory in improving prison services efficiency by working on how the theory can be incorporated in the relationship between the law court and prison waders. The objectives of the study are as follows;
1.4 SIGNIFICANT OF THE STUDY
1.5 SCOPE AND LIMITATION OF THE STUDY
This project mainly targets on the application of queuing theory in hastening the rate at which the cases of the inmates awaiting trial is attended to. Delay justice is seen as the major cause of prison congestion in Nigeria. Therefore, this project does not cover managing the records of the prisons staff as the primary target of decongesting prisons is not influenced by the number of staff present at any time.
The program is developed with a dot net (.net) windows integrated development environment (IDE). The database management system is a necessity to be considered for proper data management. The DBMS employed is Microsoft Access 2010 with Jet 4.0 provider and mysql query for ease of operation.
1.6 ORGANISATION OF THE REPORT
Chapter one contains the introduction to the project and it contains the aims and objectives, significant of the study, research methodology, scope and limitation and organization of the report. Chapter two entails the literature review that talks about history of Nigeria prison services, objective of prison service and organization chart.
More so, chapter three examines the existing system which includes analysis of existing system, problems of the existing system, and the description and benefit of proposed system. Chapter four, also explains the implementation and documentation of the system which contain design, implementation techniques, documentation, hardware and software requirements.
Lastly, chapter five includes the summary, recommendations and conclusions.
1.7 DEFINITION OF TERMS.
The following are the contextual meanings of the terms adopted in this research work:
Queue: A group of items waiting for service in a service station is known as Queue. It may be finite orinfinite.
Server: A server is a person by whom service is rendered.
Queuing System: System considering of arrival of customers, waiting in queue, picked up for service,being served and departure of customers.
Waiting Time: The time to which a customer has to wait in queue before taken to service.
Traffic Intensity: the ratio between mean arrival time rate and mean service rate.
Prison: Prison, institution designed to securely house people who have been convicted of crimes. These individuals, known as prisoners or inmates, are kept in continuous custody on a long-term basis
Prisoner: Somebody held in prison: somebody confined in a prison as a punishment for a crime or while waiting to stand trial.
Inmate: Somebody in an institution: somebody who is confined to a prison.
Prison Warden: Like other institutions, prisons contain a leadership and authority structure responsible for governing and operating the prison. At the top of this hierarchy is the warden, also known as the superintendent or chief administrator. Deputy wardens typically assist in administrative duties. Correctional officers manage and control the inmates.