aiming at strengthening African prison services in 6 Sub Saharan - PDF document

Dear Ladies and gentlemen, dear colleagues, it is on honor for me to speak to you on this Penal Reform In Africa meeting, as side conference of the ACSA meeting 2012. For those who don't know me, my name is Paul Geurts. I am from the Netherlands and work at this moment for UNMISS in Juba in South Sudan. Before starting on this challenging job, I worked for the Correctional Institutions Agency of the Netherlands. After a career as Prison Director, I was between 2007 and 2012 responsible for the International cooperation of this Agency. It was in these years, 2008 if I am not mistaken, that I met Dr. U]u Agomoh for the first time. We met at meetings of the ICPA. I recall us sitting in a small room on Barbados talking about possibilities for African countries to become more part of the international correctional world. At this moment the PRIA project was born. A project aiming at strengthening African prison services in 6 Sub Saharan countries. The project developed base line studies of the 6 prison services in its national context. Understanding the position the prison service has in their respective countries makes it possible to involve the right players to strengthen the service. The project is now almost entering its final year. We all hope that we will find again a willing Dutch government to finance some more years. Although the project

already achieved remarkable results, there are still many results to wish for. A very important aim for most, if not all, prison services, is the fight against overpopulated prisons. As we all know 200% overpopulation is not an exception. There are many ways to fight overcrowding in prisons. What most countries do is simply build more prisons. The good thing is that you have more space, the bad thing is that it is an expensive solution and in most countries a temporary one, as judges tend to send more prisoners to prison when there are cells available. Other countries just send short sentenced prisoners home. Also a short term solution as judges will just start to give longer sentences. They don't want prisoners to be sent home. Studies show that most prisoners actually do not belong in prison, as they are no threat to society. Most of them are petty criminals, stealing to get some food. People deprived from education and most often from a very poor back ground. If we look at female prisoners, most of them were first victim, and only later committed criminal acts.

Of course you'll know all these things. You are the professionals. That is why we have been talking about alternatives for detention for many years now. The first statement on alternatives for detention, that I could find, was made in the Kampala declaration in 1996. The statement says on this subject: That community services and other non-custodial measures should, if possible, be preferred to imprisonment. After this declaration there was a complete congress dedicated to community service orders in Kadoma in Zimbabwe .. In 9 points the conference stated that community sentencing not only stated the advantages to an overstretched prison service, but also stated that community service fits in a long standing African tradition of restorative justice. In that period Zimbabwe had already a functioning scheme of Community Service. The Ecosoc resolutions of 1998 and 1999 continue in the same line. In 1999, in December at the end of the last millennium we are back in Kampala. Again it is stated that alternatives to detention should be developed.

From here we move with the same type of declarations via Ouagadougou and Lilongwe to the present days. Why is it that we keep on talking about alternatives for detention? AI right, in some countries community service schemes have been developed. But are there countries, except for Kenya perhaps, where alternative detention measures have had a serious impact on the rise of prison population in general? I doubt it. Why is that? Alternatives are cheaper, cause less damage to the prisoner and are often beneficial to society. There seem to be only advantages to the implementation of community sentencing on a wide scale. Still we fail in implementing them on a larger scale. I think we will have to go back to the origin of imprisonment. Imprisonment comes from the European countries. We brought this type of punishment to this continent. That is why we see so many old colonial prisons still being used in most countries. In Europe we started using prisons in the middle ages. People who did not fit in society (we would now call them mentally ill) were

witches and should be locked away. Murderers and thieves should be locked up and political opponents should be put in jail. Real prisons started actually only to develop around the 1850's. In the Victorian days the leaders had a strong believe in re-educating prisoners in prison, to become valuable members of society. For those days these prisons were really expensive. In the Netherlands we still use some of these prisons. They were well build and spacious. After a period of enlightenment, the general atmosphere towards prisoners changed. Revenge for the crime committed took the overhand. Revenge means that a prisoner should go to prison as punishment and sometimes, according to the general public, for punishment. Where does this bring us with community services? I think that the general public does not look upon community services as a real punishment for a criminal. A criminal should be in jail is the general feeling. The general public is not concerned with the damage that living in a prison does to its inhabitants. I think this general attitude towards punishment prevents us from making bigger steps forward in the field of alternatives for detention.

Policy wise I think we have been miscalculating. We have been writing statements en policy plans, thinking that we could convince our politicians on contents. The miscalculation is that politicians in most countries listen to their voters. They want to be re-elected. Why should they listen to us, the professionals? Implementing alternative detention measures, being community service or other, should be implemented through the general public. They should understand what they gain with less people in prison. Working with the different press agencies, working with communities it is our job to explain to the general public that prisons are expensive places. The only thing they do is keep a prisoner out of circulation in the free society. After release, the prisoner will go back to society without family, without job and without a roof over his head. In this way a released prisoner will still be no added value to society, sometimes he will even stay expensive, living from charity or having to steal again. Someone who repaid society true community service repaired part of the damage done and is still part of society. After fulfilling his service he can go back into society as a normal citizen.

It is challenge for us prison professionals to develop plans to re-educate our societies to make them more receptive to alternatives for detention. ACSA, ICPA and PRAWA, but certainly the probation and social workers of this continent themselves, should play an important role in working on this challenge. Prisoners are not owned by the prison service. Prisoners are the prisoners of society! Thank you very much.