Malfunction at Umbeluzi station affects water supply in Maputo, Matola and Vila de Boane
Lusa (File photo)
Mozambican jails are currently housing about 19,000 people, although they only have a capacity for 8,000, Minister of Justice, Constitutional and Religious Affairs Isac Chande has admitted.
“We have around 19,000 inmates in the whole country that the state has to feed,” and for whom it must “provide medical care and training activities,” he explained during a lecture on “Challenges in the Application of Alternative Penalties in Mozambique” at the Technical University in Maputo.
Chande said alternative penalties may be a solution to tackle the problem of overcrowding, but the justice system had yet to “acquire a culture” for such measure.
“The disadvantages of continually putting people in prisons are obvious,” he said, adding that he believed that both the justice system and communities were not yet ready for different solutions.
“We are not yet psychologically prepared to accept alternatives to prison sentences,” he said.
Since the alternative penalties came into force, with the approval of a new Criminal Code in 2015, 588 people have been sentenced to alternatives to imprisonment such community service.
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