Prison authorities fail to keep up with deteriorating conditions, report says

By Henry Makiwa
13 December 2007

Conditions in the country’s jails have become a “threat to life and security” a recent report by the Zimbabwe Prison Services (ZPS) has revealed.

In a document prepared for the Ministry of Justice, ZPS says the country’s prison system now lacks even the most basic of necessities, making it difficult for the under-funded prisons authority to function. The report comes at a time when prisons are overwhelmed as magistrates across the country embarked on a job action that has stretched for two months now. The magistrates strike has seen many cases go untried and suspects flooding the prisons, when they could be have been bailed out of custody.

According to the ZPS report, the prison system lacks everything from food to toilet paper. Observers say the situation is likely to worsen as Mugabe’s regime pays little heed to the crisis. A crippling economic crisis blamed on Mugabe’s policies continues to ruin every facet of Zimbabwean life.

"The general state of our 43 prison physical infrastructures are a threat to life and security,” the ZPS said in the document entitled Estimate of Expenditure 2008.

“Padlocks play a very significant role in the security of the prison.
Currently most prisons do not have padlocks to use at various entry and exit points therefore security is being compromised,” the prison authority added.

The document produced after the presentation of the 2008 national budget in Parliament about two weeks ago, analyses budgetary allocations to the prison department. The figures show that ZPS was allocated Z$149 trillion, against the Z$287 trillion it had requested.

Our correspondent Simon Muchemwa reports that prison officials are asking relatives of inmates to bring them food from home, and drive them to court sessions at centres where magistrates are not on strike.
He said: “The prison authorities have no money themselves to transport suspects to courts. There is no food in prisons and the incidents of disease outbreak there is beyond imagination. There have been reports of an outbreak of pellagra disease (a vitamin and protein deficiency illness) earlier this year that killed at least 23 inmates at Chikurubi Maximum prison. To compound matters, there is no end in sight to the magistrates strike as the government says it will only deal with the matter next year.”

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