Hilary Muza 
THE deplorable state in which our prisons and police detention facilities are in is a cause for concern to anyone with respect for human dignity.
Human rights groups led by the Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human Rights and the Law Society of Zimbabwe have in the past challenged the dehumanising conditions of police cells as being unconstitutional but they have achieved little success.
Despite this setback, more pressure needs to be exerted on government so that it urgently addresses the numerous problems that have perennially dogged our prison system.
It is high time our penal system joined the tide and introduced modern standards that ensure that prisoners are accorded rights in line with the spirit of fair treatment of others and democracy.
To minimise the potentiality of violating prisoners’ rights by incarcerating them in inhabitable institutions, drastic as well as gradual remedial steps need to be taken to transform not only the prisons but police cells as well.
Perhaps as a starting point, government needs to set up a commission of inquiry that will, through an objective assessment of the facts, establish the extent of the degeneration and come up with recommendations that can assist in correcting the current anomalies. Well-documented reports of prisoner torture and abuse exist.
Other problems besetting the prison service are overcrowding, epidemics, HIV, homosexuality, inadequate health facilities, undernourishment, shortage of bedding and clothing, among many others. There is no doubt that being in a Zimbabwean prison is a horrible experience or a living nightmare that no sane adult would want to go through.
The perception by many members of the public is that our prisons are death traps because of the way they are infested with diseases as a result of poor hygienic conditions.
It appears that some healthy individuals who have had the misfortune of being incarcerated have come back as corpses or serious bedridden due to the squalor pervading our penal system.
It must be noted that Zimbabwe as a member of the United Nations, signed the Universal Declaration of Human Rights thereby committing itself to the noble cause of upholding fundamental rights of its citizens.
However, as has been evidenced by our government’s actions in the past, signing international statutes is an easy task but implementing or upholding its commitments to those statutes is deliberately made an onerous responsibility.
Zimbabwean prisons and police detention facilities continue to be at the forefront of violating detainee rights despite several United Nations conventions, protocols, declarations and treaties outlawing prisoner or detainee abuse.
In 1990, the United Nations General Assembly passed a resolution called the Basic Principles for the Treatment of Prisoners. In terms of this law, all prisoners shall be treated with the respect due to their inherent dignity and value as human beings.
Among other principles, this international statute also provides that prisoners shall have access to health services available in the country without discrimination on the ground of their legal situation. In failing to observe these important international laws, our government has repeatedly pointed to current economic problems.
However, such an excuse appears to be mere scapegoating because some of the problems bedeviling our prison system predate the current economic meltdown. It appears that the issue of prisoner rights has not been given priority because to the-powers-that-be, this is a peripheral matter that is of little significance.
The fundamental purpose of a modern day prison is to rehabilitate rather than mere retribution to an individual. In other words, it is no longer the thrust of democratic legal systems to torture the human spirit, and make it go through horrifying indignities.
Retribution as a form of punishment is an anachronism, cruel and inconsistent with modern day democratic trends. Gone are the days when prisoners or convicts used to be treated as people with no rights. While it is true that a person incarcerated legally has certain of his rights diminished, for example the right to freedom of movement, basic rights necessary to protect a human’s dignity must be observed.
Thus, a prisoner must be properly fed, clothed, and his or her place of detention must not accord with fair standards of habitation. To the contrary, the current state of our prisons is pathetic.
Most of the structures were built during the colonial times and they are in a state of disrepair. A visit to most of these institutions will make one encounter scores of convicts and suspects awaiting trial walking half naked and barefooted because the state cannot afford to properly clothe them.
This sorry state of drastic corrective measures could be corrected if stakeholders put their heads together, and adopt measures similar to those our neighbours have introduced in order to modernise our prisons. Prisoners need to be empowered through training them in various disciplines, rather than make them sweat in scenes reminiscent of the slavery days.
Our courts have been very sensitive to the plight of prisoners and as a result, rules have been introduced to guard against lengthy custodial remands, unnecessary prison terms, and prison congestion.
The punishment of community service was introduced in the early 90s and ever since, it has grown in popularity because of the way it is rehabilitative and pro-integration rather than retributive.
n Muza is a Harare-based legal practitioner. He writes in his personal capacity.
