Shame of our prisons
Sat, 20 May 2017 10:30:37 +0000
THE crisis of the ballooning prison population, amid limited correctional facilities, is no longer a criminal justice system or Government challenge alone: it demands the collaboration of all stakeholders, including our ever-present cooperating partners, to tackle.
Yesterday’s Daily Nation story giving a graphic tale of the gross over-crowding in Zambia’s correctional facilities and its implications, makes very sad reading. It tickles the united conscience of the nation to urgently attend to this penal and human rights violation that has been growing over the years.
It is totally unacceptable that 21,370 people, whether they are inmates or not, can be confined to spaces ordinarily suitable for the holding capacity of 8,250. According to the Human Rights Commission, this over-crowding represents 159 percent.
The sad part of these statistics is that there is no single person, institution or political organisation to blame. It is a problem all of us Zambians have allowed to escalate to these levels. It is not like we arrived in Zambia yesterday to find the problem. We caused it.
The truth of the matter is that every administration since Independence has not done enough to invest in the construction of correctional facilities to grow simultaneously with the country’s population and the expectation of rising crime and its consequences.
The truth is we did not prepare for it.
Dwelling on the blame game will not help us find a solution. That is why all those concerned, State and non-State actors, must come together and help the Government find the answers to what causes over-crowding in our prisons and how to deal with it. No doubt we have the solution within our grasp.
It is not fair for the Human Rights Commission to just raise the alarm and give frightening statistics and end there. They are part of the solution and they must suggest what should be done and how to do it. They cannot allow the rights of 21,370 citizens being abused, violated and trampled upon and they have nothing to say what ought to be done.
Yes, prisoners ought to be treated with humanity, humanely and with respect to enhance their dignity. It is also important that regular independent monitoring is carried out in correctional facilities to ensure the protection of the rights of prisoners.
But if there are no correctional facilities being built or expanded, or more prison staff employed and trained and items such as blankets, beds, clean uniforms and enough food are not provided, no amount of monitoring will improve the situation. What is needed is practical action.
We must campaign vigorously and make the plight of prisoners a political issue. This Government and those to come after it must be persuaded to have the political will and find the money to build more and bigger correctional facilities and equip them to the demands of UN conventions on the treatment of prisoners.
Speedy and unimpeded access to justice must be a priority for all those who come into conflict with the law. It means the police, prosecutions authority, magistrates, judges and the entire criminal justice system must be revamped and empowered to ensure everything works to achieve one goal.
The enactment of new laws and a repeal or amendments of some of the existing legislation might be necessary to overhaul the laws that promote the slow dispensation of justice and find an alternative to imprisonment as a punishment for many of the infractions of the law.
It may also be necessary to encourage more open prisons where trusted inmates are given relative freedom to live near communities while undertaking productive tasks such as farming, construction and skills training.
There are a million and one things that can be done to help decongest our prions. We have the experts and concerned citizens like PRISSCA’s Dr Godfrey Malembeka who can help provide the answers to this vexing issue. It is better than complaining and doing nothing.
