Decade-long struggle: Space remains a problem for women inmates

Women section at Central Prison Peshawar was razed, now used as parking lot

PESHAWAR:

Lack of space and overcrowding has become a cause for concern at Central Prison Peshawar due to reconstruction that is under way at the facility. However, the problem for the space for women inmates is not new. The matter has become especially critical because they have to live in a small barrack after the women section was demolished a decade ago.

“It was due to the then proposed reconstruction plan,” authorities concerned at the prison said while talking to The Express Tribune.
But the reconstruction plan was changed repeatedly. “The space has [now] been turned into a parking lot due to unknown reasons.”

However he added, “Reconstruction began two years ago but its pace is so slow that it would take years to complete and until then the lives of all the inmates, men and women, would remain miserable.”

“There was once a time when the women section was the only section in the premises where there was no overcrowding,” he said. “This is no more the case.”

Razed, not raised

Currently, there are 94 women living with their 30 children in the jail. The spacious women section was demolished because the administration was planning to reconstruct the entire jail.

However, the entire reconstruction plan was abandoned in favour of a more spacious central prison on Cherat Road in Jalozai, Nowshera. When all was set to start construction of the prison, the idea was rejected on security grounds. This further delayed the solution for the problem of a separate section for women in the prison in Peshawar.

The Jalozai prison project was abandoned due to the fears of militant attacks and then it was decided that a two-storey prison would be reconstructed on the same location in several phases.

“The ideal step was to vacate the jail and reconstruct it swiftly. But it was decided the inmates would be kept here, while reconstructing the facility at the same time,” he added.

Crammed in

Previously, convicted and undertrial inmates were kept separately in the women section but this demarcation has long been removed.

Another official at the prison told The Express Tribune they could not do anything about the demolished section as it was razed before they were posted and they were also helpless about the reconstruction.

“I can tell you just one thing that overcrowding has been a serious issue — not only for women but for men and everyone else— for the past few years due to this reconstruction,” he said. “It has been a permanent mess for the administration too because these people are not animals who could be put in one cage, they are human beings.”

Earlier, it was decided that all the inmates from Peshawar would be shifted to a high-security prison in Mardan once it was completed. However, after long delays, when it was finally constructed, the inmates were never ever shifted.

There are an estimated 2,000 prisoners in Central Prison Peshawar, which was designed just for 450 people by the British government.

Published in The Express Tribune, March 6^th, 2016.