The Sunday Mail
Edwin Mwase – Extra Reporter
The plethora of challenges curtailing operations in Zimbabwe’s correctional institutions can largely be traced to underfunding.
This has prompted some observers to call for part-privatisation of some prisons as is being done in other countries.
Last year, Secretary for Justice Virginia Mabhiza and Deputy Commissioner-General of Prisons Aggrey Machingauta told the Parliamentary Portfolio Committee on Justice and Legal Affairs that the country’s prisons experienced serious operational difficulties due to critical underfunding, and this made it difficult to adequately cater for the 18 460 inmates in the facilities then.
Deputy Comm-Gen Machingauta said correctional services required roughly US$1,2 million monthly to operate optimally, but they were getting US$300 000 from central Government.
Zimbabwe Association for Crime Prevention and the Rehabilitation of the offender (Zacro) director Mr Edison Chihota said of the situation: “Our systems of incarceration do not have existing frameworks to rehabilitate mainly due to financial incapacitation.”
In other words, Zimbabwe simply has prisons where people are locked up but does not offer correctional and rehabilitation services.
“Funding must not just be talked about, it must be provided, for the correctional services to be able to fulfil its mandate, lest the correctional system ends up criminalising the offender rather than the intended purpose of rehabilitating,” Mr Chihota said.
Prisoners no longer get the required normal diet and this leads to serious health complications.
This low funding means prisons struggle to buy books and tools needed to rehabilitate convicts.
As such, some experts have called for public-private partnerships to improve correctional services.
Private prisons, also known as for-profit prisons, are third party operated complexes.
The third party operator is a government-contracted agency, and private prison companies typically enter into contractual agreements in which the state pays them an agreed amount of money for each prisoner they take care of.
The private prisons in turn are expected to provide certain services, apart from the security-related ones, for rehabilitation of prisoners. They are allowed to use the prisoners to produce commercial goods which the private prison sell to the public for profit.
In this way, Government shares the burden of correctional services with the private sector and the prisons can generate money and rehabilitate offenders.
Director of the Female Prisoners Support Trust Ms Rita Nyamupinga contends that private prisons can be cost-saving and efficient.
“Besides, the quality in the general life standards, efficiency in the reduction of recidivism and effectiveness in the rehabilitation process has been found to be favoring private prisons over public prisons,” she said.
Ms Myamupinga said private prisons could hold non-violent convicts.
“Those classified as dangerous criminals must remain under the care of the public prisons, which have the capacity and resources to deal with security threats posed by dangerous criminals,” she said.
Sociologist Ms Miriam Makono said recent studies showed private prisons were cost-effective when compared to public facilities. She said they cost at least 10 percent less to run.
“Indications are that countries in most regions of the world are turning en-masse to the United States of America-led model of private prisons,” she said.
Ms Makono said countries in North and South America, Europe, Africa and the Asia-Pacific were increasingly incorporating for-profit prisons into their correctional systems.
Countries currently using private prisons or in the process of implementing such plans include Brazil, Chile, Greece, Jamaica, Japan, Mexico, Peru, and South Africa.
Another observer, who preferred anonymity, outlined other advantages of private prisons; including cheaper bed capacity and improved quality of service.
“Private prisons are a necessary supplement to public ones in the crisis of prison overcrowding. Private prisons allow governments to speed up the process of building a prison because the legislators do not have to authorise bonds.
“It can take a government over two years to build a prison while private companies can cut that time with their resources,” he said.
“Private corporations are able to build prisons in locations that provide economic benefits to the community. The benefits to the community include jobs, increase spending in the community and stable employment.”
Some reports say Australia, New Zealand and the United Kingdom each hold between 10 and 20 percent of their prisoners in private facilities.
Deputy Minister of Justice, Legal and Parliamentary Affairs Fortune Chasi admittedly said prisons, like the rest of the country, were affected by economic sluggishness.
“Government is working on various programmes to produce food and improve standards for the prisoners,” he said. “We are also looking at ways to make the correctional services self-sufficient.”
Deputy Minister Chasi said they were studying the experiences of other countries to see what was possible for Zimbabwe.
Zimbabwe Prisons and Correctional Services public relations officer Chief Superintendent Elizabeth Banda also spoke of attaining self-sufficiency.
“We are working on capacity building projects and commercialisation … so as to gradually wean ourselves from being feeds-off of the central government,” said Chief Supt Banda.
“We have already set up our company, Pamberi, and we are now making 100 percent retention on most of our agricultural produce”.
She added that external factors like stigmatisation of convicts by society in general were scuttling rehabilitation processes.
