Justice minister seeks urgent solution to overcrowding

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Justice minister seeks urgent solution to overcrowding

8:12 CAT | 10 May 2016

Angop (File photo) / Maputo Penitentiary

Mozambican Justice Minister Isaque Chande is seeking solutions that will end overcrowding in the Maputo Penitentiary (formerly known as the Maputo Central Prison), which was designed to hold 800 prisoners, but currently accommodates 2,744.

Cited in Saturday’s issue of the Maputo daily “Noticias”, Chande said that to end overcrowding it is urgent for his Ministry to talk with the Attorney-General’s Office and with the Constitutional Council to find solutions.

“We need to improve our coordination with the courts and with the prosecution services to ensure compliance with the law”, he said, speaking a few days after he had visited the prison. He pointed to lack of coordination between the various bodies involved in the administration of justice as a key problem.

One reason for overcrowding is that people who should be allowed to await their trial at home, are instead kept in prison well beyond the legal limits for preventive detention.

“We have to establish conditions so that people who have already been held in preventive detention in terms of the law, are allowed to leave prison and wait for their trials in freedom”, Chande said. “That would be one way of relieving the pressure on our prisons”.

During Chande’s visit to the prison, some of the prisoners claimed they had been tortured by members of the police unit guarding the jail.

The Minister replied “these are cases which should be reported to the prison management, so that police agents who commit these crimes can be identified and held responsible”.

Health conditions in Mozambique’s prisons are precarious and in April the National Prison Service (SERNAP) announced that, in the first quarter of this year, 51 prisoners had died in the country’s 81 prisons. 25 of them had died of AIDS and a further 21 from tuberculosis.

Source: AIM