INSIGHT: Congestion in remand prisons down by 45pc

Dar es Salaam. Environmental, Human Rights Care and Gender Organisation (Envirocare), which is based in Dar es Salaam, in collaboration with the Prisons Department, organised a paralegal symposium in Morogoro this month to evaluate achievements, challenges, give recommendations and pass resolutions and a plan of action to reduce congestion in remand prisons and juvenile detention homes.

The two are implementing a three-year project (2012-2015) called Tanzania Paralegal Remand Prisons and Detention Home Project (TPRPHP) worth Sh719,999,790 in 20 prisons in Kilimanjaro, Arusha, Tanga, Morogoro and Dar es Salaam and four juvenile detention homes in Moshi, Arusha, Tanga and Dar es Salaam.

The objective of the project is to reduce congestion in remand prisons and juvenile detention homes and provide legal aid to remand prisoners.

Speaking before the Prisons Department Commissioner General, Mr John Casmir Minja, who was the guest of honour at the opening of the symposium, Envirocare Executive Director Loyce Lema said: “We are here to hear reports from paralegal desks in remand prisons and juvenile detention homes. We will also hear a report from an Envirocare project and together we will have an opportunity to give recommendations on what should be done to reduce congestion in remand prisons and juvenile detention homes.”  

She said according to research conducted in 2012, the number of remand prisoners was 4,737, which was twice as much as the capacity of remand prisons in the country. She noted that remand prisoners, who accessed paralegal desks were 3,961 out of who 1,284 were granted bail, 484 were imprisoned, 510 were discharged and 1,683 had their cases still pending in court. According to research findings, congestion in remand prisons is compounded by protracted delays in accessing criminal justice.

“Therefore, the TPRPHP has reduced congestion in remand prisons by between 38 per cent and 45 per cent depending on the area, where the project is implemented and the number of remand prisoners and juveniles,” she explained. Lema attributed the success of the project to trust and cooperation between Envirocare and the Prisons Department, a spirit of voluntary service and commitment of those involved in paralegal aid and community legal education.

Other factors include growing awareness of remand prisoners’ rights as a result of legal aid and education, which made the latter defend themselves and get to know better the proceedings of their cases.

She explained that the provision of legal aid had been facilitated by a paralegal network that had been formed and that the court, the police and heads of prisons had been cooperating well with paralegals and all these facilitated timely access to criminal justice.

She also said the leaders of local governments, villages and wards had been sensitised on the importance of paralegal desks in remand prisons. This has led to timely granting of bail.

“All this has been done not by Envirocare alone, but all of us, who are here today. Thus, we have a reason to congratulate ourselves. Members of the public ought to be well informed about the importance of bailing their relatives held on remand and reintegrating them in community when they are discharged,” said the Envirocare Executive Director.

She noted that their project aimed at reaching out to all remand prisoners and juveniles. “In order to implement a project like this, we need to have people, who are knowledgeable about the law and legal aid. It is in this sense that 88 paralegals, 25 police officers, 50 prison officers and 25 magistrates were trained in legal aid so that they may attend to the people targeted by the project,” she said.

She also mentioned some of the challenges they encountered during the implementation of the project. These include lack of transport to take remand prisoners to court, a protracted investigation process and ignorance of bail conditions and a fear that if a person bails out a relative or a friend he or she will end up being imprisoned.

On the other hand, she said, it was surprising to find that some of the remand prisoners preferred remaining in remand prisons to being discharged after coping well with remand prison life.

“The law prohibits remand prisoners to work, so they are served by prisoners serving their jail term. Accordingly, the remand prisoners are not working. We recommend this law to be reviewed in order to entitle them to work and reduce the government’s burden of looking after them,” she said.

She explained she believed the three-day symposium would be a catalyst for furthering what had been achieved  in the project, including improving paralegal desks in remand prisons and juvenile detention homes and establish more paralegal desks in the remaining remand prisons.

For his part, the Prisons Commissioner General thanked Envirocare for the forward looking project and said besides other things being done in the project, the organisation in collaboration with his office had conducted preliminary research on remand prison congestion in five regions of the project and prepare a report that involved various criminal justice stakeholders to give their views, including their participation in the entire project.

“I would like to say that my office has fully participated in giving views on the implementation of this project. When this organisation was implementing this three-year project (2012- 2015), which is funded by the Danish Government through the Legal Services Facility (LSF), it aimed at remand prisoners and juvenile detention homes with legal problems by 100 per cent,” he said.

He said any society that was ignorant of its rights could easily fall into unnecessary disputes, which could lead to injustice or delayed justice.

“We should remember that delayed justice is justice denied. I know that many big family, clan and ethnic disputes and their causes happen due to little knowledge of law  and lack of legal procedures of dispute resolution. It is evident that if society has good understand of various laws there will be less violations,” he said.  He thus stressed the importance of paralegals and their participation in the symposium.

During the symposium, participants had an opportunity to share reports from various desks established in remand prisons and juvenile detention homes.

They thus resolved to start and strengthen paralegal desks in remand prisons and juvenile detention homes, strengthen cooperation between paralegals and other criminal justice institutions, emphasise the use of alternative punishment (suspended sentence) to reduce congestion, provide civic education on criminal justice and speed up the process of recognising paralegals (incorporating paralegals into the country’s legal system).

Closing the paralegal symposium in Morogoro, the Commissioner for Legal and Prisons Affairs, Dr Juma Malewa, said “this symposium was organised for sharing experience and evaluating the achievements, challenges and giving recommendations and advice on how to improve the provision of paralegal aid in remand prisons and juvenile detention homes.”

He said in their reports participants had highlighted challenges such as transport of remand prisoners to court, a protracted investigation process, ignorance on the importance of bailing out relatives held on remand for fear that those doing it may be imprisoned, lack of cooperation with criminal justice organs, a language problem with regard to remand prisoners and foreign remand prisoners, lack of credible information from remand prisoners and lack of time to provide legal aid.

“Apart from these challenges participants have also mentioned great achievements during the implementation of this project. These achievements include capacity building for 88 paralegals, 25 police officers and 45 magistrates, which resulted in knowing how to address prison congestion in remand prisons. A total of 3,961 remand prisoners accessed legal aid, which led to some of them being discharged, some of the cases were closed/ended, some were bailed out and other had their cases heard, which are now in various stages,” said Dr Malewa.

“Dear participants, to a great extent, the recommendations given aim at continuing this project for it has shown notable achievements in the Prisons Department and juvenile detention homes. The Prisons Department promises to continue cooperating with Envirocare and other non-governmental organisations.”

Likewise, he said the Prisons Department promised to continue using its officers, who had been trained in legal aid in order to coordinate paralegal desks so as to continue providing legal aid to remand prisoners. “This goes in line with establishing paralegal desks in other prisons,” he said.

He explained that the Prisons Department would also continue stressing and cooperating with other criminal justice institutions to ensure the problem of congestion in remand prisons was addressed at all levels.

“In the implementation of these resolutions from this symposium it is good to put a realistic time frame and the implementation of these resolutions, which will be evaluated using special criteria putting in place unrealistic objectives of the project, we must ensure we adhere to the laws of the land and regulations,” he said. 

Paralegal aid is a recent development in Tanzania. Although it is not formally incorporated into the country’s legal system, it has been working well for it enables needy people to access legal aid free of charge through the help of paralegals. These are non-lawyers, who have been trained and have acquired requisite skills in legal aid and dispute resolution.