Children in prison

Truly horrific picture of the state of prisons, prison population in Sindh has been revealed in Sindh Assembly

A truly horrific picture of the state of prisons and the prison population in Sindh has been revealed during question hour in the Sindh Assembly. The standout figure is that 95% of children in jails are under trial and a mere 5% are convicted of any crime. To be scrupulously fair this is unlikely to be the fault of the prisons themselves and is a stinging indictment of the utterly inadequate justice system that is responsible for processing prisoners on remand and un-convicted. There are 210 juveniles, including four foreigners reportedly Afghan, in the Sindh prison system. They are primarily accused of murder or robbery. They are housed in what are now known as Youthful Offenders Industrial Schools, the implication being that there is at least a possibility of learning something useful while detained. There are four such units province-wide and on current figures this is not sufficient to meet demand. Juveniles that may only be detained for a few days are held in local adult jails, but segregated from adult prisoners.

Other questions revealed other systemic deficits in the prison system ranging from a lack of CCTV cameras, a system of bribes being demanded from under-trial prisoners that prolonged their stay sometimes beyond the time of the sentence their alleged crime(s) may attract, there is no maximum security prison though four are ‘proposed’ — and given the nature of the danger that some prisoners present to the community at large, they cannot be built soon enough.

Juveniles aside it is evident that the entire prison system in Sindh is in a state of rolling crisis. Increasing numbers of very high-risk individuals are in the prison system and they often exploit the weaknesses within as the rummage raid in Karachi jails recently revealed. At the very least the issue of detained juveniles needs to be addressed as a matter of urgency, which means tackling the problems in the justice system. And the chances of that happening? Vanishingly small.

Published in The Express Tribune, November 25^th, 2017.

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