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Prison Overcrowding
Up one levelOvercrowding in prison creates many problems including illness, lack of nutrition and lack of rehabilitation programming. In response to this crisis, many national organisations are working with government and other agencies to help alleviate prison crowding.
- An Indefinite Wait for Freedom
- “Innocent until proven guilty” doesn’t mean much for the nearly 800 prisoners who are crowded into the dirty, dank prison cells of Liberia’s Monrovia Central Prison. Most have yet to be convicted of a crime – some charged with offences as minor as not paying a bill – but they have languished here for years without a trial.
- PF Zimbabwe Addresses Prison Overcrowding
- Recently, Peter Mandianike, PF Zimbabwe’s Executive Director, addressed the Committee on Justice and Legal Affairs regarding the substandard condition of Zimbabwe’s prisons. His intervention followed a senior prison official’s report that widespread malnutrition and disease is spreading in Zimbabwe prisons due to rampant overcrowding and the lack of funding for food and medicines.
- Ensuring Due Process for Prisoners in Liberia
- Prison Fellowship Liberia is participating in a Case Flow Committee created by the national government to review the cases of prisoners being held without trial. Each week, the committee – consisting of representatives from the United Nations Mission in Liberia, the Ministry of Justice and PF Liberia – reviews cases to identify prisoners who have not been formally charged in court.
- Facilitating Prisoner Releases in Liberia
- Recently, PF Liberia aided the release of 36 prisoners held for more than 180 days without trial in Monrovia Central Prison and Kakata Prison Centre.
- Liberating the Captives
- It started with a family feud and then Zanele Dlamini found herself in prison. When her half-sister accused her of stealing, Zanele fervently protested her innocence. But she couldn’t afford legal representation and under duress she confessted to the theft. Now she and her baby were facing ten months in prison because she couldn’t pay the fine of just $30USD.