EDITORIAL COMMENT: Make police holding cells liveable

herald-newspapersIt is common cause that no normal person wants to go to prison. That is understandable. A prison is not a hotel, least of all a holiday resort.

People go to prison because they have committed a serious offence and have been convicted in a competent court of law. Society wants to put them away from normal society for sometime.

In short, offenders are put behind bars as part of punishment for crimes committed against fellow citizens or for breaking the law in another country.

Because the sentence is imposed by a competent court of law, often society is happy that the criminal is getting his just deserts. They deserve to lose their freedom for a specified period.

However, of late there has been a drive to not only punish the offender but to also rehabilitate him/her in the hope that when they leave prison they easily integrate into society.

Thus prisoners are taught skills to encourage them to abandon a life of crime if previously they didn’t have any vocational training.

Added to this positive side to punishment are efforts to accord prisoners a modicum of respect.

They cannot lose all their rights just because they have committed a crime and have been put in prison.

That is why often the law tends to give the prisoner the benefit of the doubt.

It is in this light that we applaud remarks by Chief Justice Godfrey Chidyausiku about Zimbabwe’s police holding cells.

Speaking in his capacity as head of the Judiciary at a police pass-out parade at Morris Deport in Harare on Thursday this week, Justice Chidyausiku deplored the terrible living conditions in police holding cells.

He said: “The Constitutional Court has held that detaining suspects in these cells is a violation of their constitutional right.

“In light of this, I would like to appeal to Government to provide the police with resources to enable them to improve the conditions of police holding cells.”

Justice Chidyausiku made clear he was fully aware of Government’s parlous financial status but that repairs to police holding cells could be done in stages.

“This does not require a lot of money and would evince Government’s commitment to attend to this problem,” he said.

“The conditions in some of these cells are inhuman and degrading,” the Chief Justice observed.

That last comment, we believe, is what should push the authorities to move with speed.

It should not be the objective of the prison system to treat inmates in an inhuman and degrading way.

Even criminals still have residual constitutional rights as defined by the law. These should be observed.

Keeping people under degrading conditions has the risk of corrupting those who look after them.

Having been degraded and reduced to less than human, the inmates can be subjected to physical beatings and deprivation of essentials that should make their confined lives liveable.

This destroys their sense of worth and makes it that much difficult to rehabilitate them.

While it is axiomatic that prison is neither a hotel nor a holiday resort, it should not, at the same time, be turned into a torture chamber to break the inmates’ spirits.

The conviction and detention already constitute sufficient punishment as determined by the law.

The Chief Justice is therefore not asking for too much, but that Government takes note and is seen to be taking note of court injunctions.

It is the least that can be expected.

The Government already has a bad image problem.

It is not in anyone’s interest for it to be seen to be ignoring the observations of its own courts of law.

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