Malawi’s congested 23 prisons, home to about 8 000 convicts but with a capacity of 4 500, are “hell on earth”, a high court judge said in a newspaper interview published on Saturday.
Michael Mtegha, who chairs a national committee on community service, said the prisons receive meagre resources from government, leading to “starvation in our prisons.”
“Prisons are certainly hell on earth and reformation is out of the question,” he told weekly, Saturday Nation.
He blamed magistrates of traditional courts who are resisting change and sceptical of sentencing some convicts to community service.
The courts have recently jailed 1 670 minor offenders “who did not warrant the custodial sentence but community service,” he said.
Traditional courts, dubbed ” kangaroo courts”, were widely used to convict political cases during the dictatorial rule of late Kamuzu Banda.
Mtegha said the magistrates fear that convicts would abscond if committed to community service.
The country’s community service program already has 1 800 offenders serving under it since its launch in 2000 to reduce congestion in prisons. – AFP