Mozambique: Courts must use non-custodial sentences as from 2021

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Mozambique: Courts must use non-custodial sentences as from 2021

9:31 CAT | 08 Oct 2020

Photo: Ministério da Justiça, Assuntos Constitucionais e Religiosos

Mozambican courts will be obliged, as from January 2021, to stop using prison terms in cases where the law allows offenders to be sentenced to alternatives to imprisonment, Deputy Justice Minister Filimao Suaze announced in Maputo on Wednesday.

This measure could have a significant impact on easing overcrowding in Mozambican prisons, and on reducing prison expenditure.

Swazefb — Photo: Ministério da Justiça, Assuntos Constitucionais e Religiosos

Suaze was speaking at the opening of a Coordinating Forum on Implementing Non-Custodial Sentences, seeking to lay the foundations for implementing the new penal legislation as from next year.

He said that, from 2015 to the present, courts have only sentenced 2,348 people found guilty of various crimes to alternatives to imprisonment and of these only 1,796 were implemented. Suaze pointed out that this was only six per cent of the sentences passed over the five year period. Currently there is a prison population of 18,378 inmates.

“From the balance sheet we have drawn up, since non-custodial sentences were introduced, they have not had the acceptance we would have expected from those who apply the law”, said Suaze.

The excuse was the lack of accessory legislation, namely a new Penal Procedural Code and the Code on the Implementation of Penalties.

These laws were passed by the country’s parliament, the Assembly of the Republic in 2019, and will take effect as from January 2021.

Correct use of penalties that do not deprive offenders of their freedom, said Suaze, could make a contribution to the rehabilitation of criminals, and to social peace and harmony, as well as relieving the prison system of the chronic problem of overcrowding.

The main alternative to imprisonment is community service. But sentencing offenders to perform socially useful work, Suaze said, “requires a reorganisation of the prison services, of the beneficiary bodies, of the communities, and even of the courts”.

“Each of those involved must be aware of their own responsibilities so that they can act in a systematic, synchronised and harmonious way”, he added.

Suaze insisted that the communities must be made aware of the importance of the alternatives to imprisonment “and of their preponderant role in guaranteeing the effective implementation of these penalties”.

The general director of the National Prison Service (SERNAP), Jeremias Cumbe, said the challenge now is to expand throughout the country the services responsible for following up the non-custodial sentences, and monitoring the offenders serving these sentences.

Source: AIM