know your civil rights on False Imprisonment

[Olajire Deborah]

know your rights on False Imprisonment

False imprisonment is any unlawful deprivation of the liberty of another person. The 1999 Constitution (as amended) stipulates in Section 35 as follows: “Every person shall be entitled to his personal liberty and no person shall be deprived of such liberty…”

Therefore, it is wrong under the law to intentionally deprive any person of his liberty without lawful justifications. It is a civil as well as constitutional wrong.

Deprivation of liberty here does not have to be in a confined space alone, or behind bars, or in a room or within the confines of four walls. Any act of unlawful restraint of a person’s movement is false imprisonment. A person may be put under false imprisonment in an open space or field or on the street. The most important element here is that there must be an intention to physically restrain the movement of the victim or deprive him of his personal liberty for a period of time.

Note, however, that for the victim to succeed in this claim, the restraint must be total, and not partial. This means that there must have been no room for escape for the victim, or alternative routes for his movement because imprisonment indicates that there is a restraint within a limit set by the defendant.

False imprisonment comes in various forms. For example, Mr. James owes Mrs. Anne some money and she went to his house to demand for it. It may amount to false imprisonment if Mrs. Anne locks the door and refuses to allow Mr. James leave his own house until or unless the debt is paid, notwithstanding that Mr. James is in his own house. It is false imprisonment if Miss Jane Chinyere visits Mr. John at home, and Mr. John locks the doors and refuses to allow her leave when she wished. It is false imprisonment to take a man to a destination and hold him there against his wish. It is false imprisonment to hold someone in e.g., a car and prevent him from leaving or disembarking when he so wished. It is false imprisonment to keep a person in a room or office under an allegation that he committed a crime without handing him over to the police within a reasonable period of time.

False imprisonment could also be with the Police or other security agencies. It is false imprisonment if a police officer unlawfully detains a suspect in any other place aside from a police station. It is false imprisonment to detain a person without any lawful justification. It is false imprisonment for members of any the armed forcessecurity agency,, (e.g., army, navy or air force), aside from the police to detain a person upon suspicion of having committed a crime without handling him over to the police within a reasonable time, so long as the offence is not related to the military or against national security. It is false imprisonment for members of vigilante groups to detain a person suspected of having committed an offence without handling him over to the police within a reasonable time.
It is false imprisonment for the landlord to lock up the gates of an apartment or premises in order to restrain a defaulting tenant from leaving the premises or in order to frustrate him into packing out of the premises. It is false imprisonment for a creditor to lock up the doors on the debtor in order to force him to pay.

A more serious form of false imprisonment is abduction and kidnapping, which have become very rampant in our society of late. Abduction essentially involves taking a female victim away or detaining her against her wish with intent to marry her or have sexual intercourse with her. Kidnapping means the victim being unlawfully imprisoned outside or inside Nigeria or detained against his wish, in such a manner as to prevent others from knowing where he is detained and being refused release until and unless certain conditions are fulfilled. Either way, abduction and kidnapping are unlawful, illegal and unconstitutional. There are no justifications for them. Unfortunately, most victims do not even know that such actions They amount to false imprisonment under civil law and a trespass to their person for which they victim is entitledare entitled to make claims for compensation, if the defendant is apprehended or known.

False imprisonment does not, however, have to be the physical restraint of the movement or body of the victim alone. It will be false imprisonment even if it is an indirect restraint of the victim. For instance, a female visits a male and in order to coerce her into staying, he seizes her clothing. This is false imprisonment because the victim is not expected to walk out naked or half-naked. Another instance is where the defendant seizes goods belonging to the victim in order to force him not to leave or force him to go somewhere with him. This is false imprisonment. It is false imprisonment if a person seizes the car keys of another or deflates his car tyres with the intention to prevent him/her from leaving a particular location. It is false imprisonment if an armed policeman unlawfully detains a man and asks him to sit down in a particular place with the threat of use of force.

Note here that the period of confinement does not have to be long. It is irrelevant that the victim was falsely imprisoned for a relatively short period of time, or for days or weeks. It is sufficient if the false imprisonment lasted for some moments, so long as there was the unlawful intention to totally deprive the victim of his movement and there was the actual deprivation or confinement. The deprivation must also have occurred by the act of the defendant.

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