Prison conditions

The federal ombudsman has come up with a report on prison conditions which — appalling as they definitely are — scarcely add to the public knowledge. Pakistani detention facilities notoriously hold inmates twice or thrice their capacity, so much so that in some cases there is hardly enough room for prisoners to move body and limbs freely. The cramped conditions are ideal breeding grounds for the spread of infectious diseases — none more so than the coronavirus of our time. So it is unsurprising when the ombudsman’s office tells the country’s top court that some 500 prisoners across the country are afflicted with the potentially deadly ailment. The highest number of inmates down with the Covid-19 are lodged in Sindh’s prisons (291), followed by K-P (126), Balochistan (80) and Punjab (3).

It is heartening to learn that our most populous province boasts of a minuscule number of virus-afflicted prisoners. It merits investigation how the province reined in the rampaging contagion within the premises of its correctional facilities, so the model could be replicated in other federating units. But social distancing is described by health professionals as the key to limiting the pandemic and this is where prisons tend to fail. The ombudsman, through the report submitted in the Supreme Court, notes that the country has 20,000 excess inmates than the overall prison capacity. It stated 52,303 inmates were in 43 prisons across Punjab against the capacity of 38,806; 18,098 inmates in Sindh prisons against the capacity of 13,538; as many as 12,029 inmates in K-P prisons against the capacity of 11,362; and 2,255 inmates in Balochistan against the capacity of 2,585.

But overcapacity is not the only issue facing our jails. A catalogue of other problems haunt the prisoners, including inadequate food, lack of access to health facilities, ill-treatment by jail wardens and many sundry rights violations. Amnesty International recently called for ending violations of the right to life and the right to health for prisoners, guaranteed by Pakistan’s Constitution.

 

Published in The Express Tribune, January 11^th, 2021.

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