According to the latest Parliamentary Update from the Southern African Parliamentary Support Trust (SAPST), the Thematic Committee on Human Rights has prepared the committee’s first report on the state of prisons and prisoners in Zimbabwe.

Following visits to Harare Central Prison, Chikurubi Maximum Prison, Mutare Prison, Mutimurefu Prison and Whawha, the committee made a number of observations including:

• Prisoners’ living conditions left a lot to be desired mainly due to budgetary constraints. Inadequate funding made it difficult for the ZPS to operate effectively and prisoners found the life in prison hazardous, as they had to make do without most of life’s basic necessities.
• Prisoners’ diet, uniforms, bedding, transport to take them to referral hospitals and courts, constant supply of medication especially ARVs and ablution facilities were critical for the health of the prisoners while they serve their sentences.
• Mutare Remand Prison Complex was in a dilapidated state and needed refurbishment as a matter of urgency as it was no longer fit for human habitation. There was need for urgent maintenance to avoid eruption of diseases and other communicable infections. The complex was built with punitive intentions during the colonial period and should be renovated to suit a Rehabilitation Centre.
• Nursing mothers in prisons fed their children from the rations they received. Children were being forced to survive on sadza served with beans and/or vegetables. Lack of balanced diet affected the growth of these children. There were no crèches/pre schools for these children and this affected their rights to basic education.
• The Committee noted with great concern the length of time the prisoners stayed on remand especially those convicted of murder, stock theft, robbery and rape. Some had gone for more than 6 years without trial.
• Young offenders were affected by lack of transport to transport them to Whawha Young Offenders Prison and sometimes stayed at Remand Prisons for more than 3 years. There were no facilities at the Remand prison to protect young offenders from being sexually molested by adults.
• Lack of balanced diet was another critical issue that was raised by inmates. A number of inmates showed signs of malnutrition.
• The Committee noted lack of legal representation for most of the prisoners. Most of the prisoners said that they did not afford lawyers and they had lost their cases even if they were innocent because they would be competing with those that were fortunate enough to have legal representation.

This entry was posted on July 14th, 2011 at 12:24 pm by Amanda Atwood and is filed under Governance, Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.