According to Nyasa Times at a
court users meeting in Ntchisi last week members of the judiciary made comments
encouraging the use of non-custodial sentences. Given the overcrowded nature of
Malawi's prisons a change in attitude of this type would be greatly
welcomed.
The scarcity of legal personnel
coupled with infrastructural deficiencies on one hand and the increasing levels
of poverty and unemployment on the other, has culminated in seriously over
crowded prisons in Malawi. Maula prison alone is operating with over double the
numbers of persons it should hold.
Currently many suspects of petty
crimes are denied access to primary legal interventions like being taken to
court and granted bail and are then handed down stiff sentences. As such many
suspects end up spending unnecessarily long periods in prison and police cells,
a situation, which has vast social-economic implications on both the
individuals and government. This current state of affairs is detrimental to the
country’s progress in a number of ways. Firstly productive citizens who should
have been contributing to the country’s national development as well as
providing for their families are prevented from doing so. Secondly longer
periods of stay in prison culminate into the learning of bad behavior from more
experienced criminals, it also makes many suspects vulnerable to communicable
diseases. Thirdly this scenario creates room for corruption for remandees who
desperately want to get out of prison.
The need for alternative
interventions in this area is clearly highlighted by data collected for a case
management report released in August 2011 by OSISA, which suggests that 8,000
people, mostly young men, are admitted to pre-trial detention, from a sample of
six Malawi prisons every year.
This amounts to 1 in every 250 Malawian men, which has a significant
socio-economic impact at a societal level.
IRLI believe that a focus away
from custodial sentences for minor offences towards rehabilitative
measures could work as a very effective an intervention strategy in the
criminal justice sector in Malawi.
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