Good afternoon. An early Christmas present is here for 3,000 prison inmates, who are to be released with electronic tags in a pilot project to relieve overcrowding in the prison system, which launched yesterday (see below).
It is shameful that it has taken such a long time to implement this project, which has been pushed by justice ministers in the past and also by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, which is supporting the initiative. Mozambique’s prisons are appallingly overcrowded, with over 20,000 prisoners currently and capacity for less than 9,000 of them. As well as lack of funding, a major obstacle to implementing tagging has been cultural attitudes. Many Mozambicans are strongly opposed to the idea that criminals should be allowed to roam freely instead of being behind bars, despite the fact that the state cannot afford to feed or house so many prisoners. Angry crowds have been known to burn down police stations and beat up police officers for releasing people arrested for petty theft.
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From the Zitamar Live Blog:
For that reason alone, the tagging project will be under a lot of scrutiny. We understand that not all 3,000 prisoners will be released at once, but in phases. All the same, the stakes are high. If the National Penitentiary Service, which is in charge of monitoring the tagged prisoners, fails to control them, there may be pressure to drop the scheme. Already there is suspicion that corrupt officials may allow privileged convicts to avoid having their movements monitored, in exchange for bribes. Another risk factor is how the families of prisoners will react to having an unemployed criminal living in the family home and needing to be maintained. When hundreds of prisoners escaped in the disorder following last October’s disputed elections, some of their families refused to keep them and sent them back to prison.
