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Published: July 23rd 2010
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I spent the past 5 work days inside one of Uganda's larger prisons which is located about an hour outside downtown Kampala. We are doing a study on pre-trial detention of prisoners. According to the Ugandan Constitution, the maximum amount of time one is supposed to be detained before the commencement of one's trial is 60 days for minor crimes and 180 for capital crimes (those that carry a sentence of death or life imprisonment). The goal going into the prisons is essentially to look at every file of detainees on remand (i.e. in prison before sentencing) and record what they are charged with, how many times they have been remanded (i.e. sent back to prison by the courts to await trial) and how long they have been on remand total (along with some other info on the court they appeared in etc).
So, after teaching myself how to insert drop down boxes in excel and creating a masterpiece (to be determined I suppose) of a spreadsheet, 4 of us headed off to the prisons armed with 2 computers, a copy of the Penal Code Act and a few bags of plantain chips. Side note - they have potato chips
here that are unreal because they are fried in chicken fat. So bad for you and yet to delicious.
Back to the point. We went through about 660 prison files and essentially all of them had been on remand for way longer than the stipulated time. Those who were within the time-frame were only there because they were arrested in the past month - I can guess pretty confidently that if we go back in 6 months they will still be there. The problem seems to lie with the judicial system which is underfunded and overstressed. People rot in jail while the Department of the Prosecutor tries and fails to gather evidence for the case to proceed. At the most extreme there was one detainee who has spent over 2,860 days on remand (almost 8 years) and has been remanded 74 times. Most cases were not this extreme but there was a good deal of people who had been arrested in 2006 and still awaiting trial.
Most of the files I looked at were capital offences that carried a death sentence (should the person be found guilty) such as rape, murder, aggravated robbery and defilement (rape of someone
under the age of 18). At the time I was in the prison there were about 700 people on remand and another 200 convicts. There is also a separate woman's compound with about 50 prisoners and, wait for it,
their children. That's right, in Uganda if you are pregnant when you are arrested, your child is born in prison and serves out the sentence with you. Being no expert on the subject I would guess that it is possible for someone else to take the child but I am not sure. All I know is that I saw more than a few kids kicking around in the woman's compound. It may even be that if you are arrested and have no one to give the children to, they come along with you.
The prison grounds are quite large and include farming land. The men's barracks themselves are a big rectangle shaped building that has a a large courtyard in the middle. I wasn't allowed to take pictures of the grounds themselves, the courtyard or the prisoners so the best I can describe it, once you are inside (you have to pass through double locked and constantly manned gates to
get in) there is a large courtyard with an open air kitchen at the far end. The rest of the courtyard is surrounded by 30 wards and some offices. We were sitting in one of the offices. To get to the office we had to walk along the perimeter of the courtyard were all the prisoners were hanging out and staring. The room we were in was also the intake room and where all the prisoner's clothes for when they go to court were kept so there was a constant flow of detainees in and out as we worked. None of the guards have weapons because as one of them opined when I asked, "You've seen their charges, they would disarm us in a minute." All that said though, the place felt surprising safe and calm. The prisoners were obviously curious about us (especially me) but not one of them said a word to us (save a one prisoner who the guards called crazy who yelled something about Obama directed at me). At the end we were given a tour of the grounds and the workshop. The wards themselves are about 6m by 8m and have flush squat toilets which
I was pleasantly surprised by. They were really clean - nothing in them except for the bedding on the floor and jerry cans for water. The cells are supposed to hold 28 max, which I think would leave space for everyone to sleep but one of the guards admitted that sometimes, like in Sept 2009 when riots were occurring, the cells become over-crowed. Given that there were about 900 prisoners while I was there and 30 wards, there were probably about 30 men in each ward.
All in all the place felt pretty sedate. There were prayer session led multiple times a day for both the Muslim and Christian inmates. I didn't witness any fights. Pretty much everyone just seemed bored out of their minds as they washed their clothes, walked around the courtyard or just sat there. There was also a TV which they could watch for a few hours a day. Truthfully I expected the place to be a horrifying hell hole which it was not at all. I wouldn't want to be stuck there for 6 years awaiting trial for a crime I may or may not have committed but overall I think there are a
lot worse prisons. I was told that because this was a central government prison it was in better condition than many others in the country. The level of prisoner on prisoner violence and aggression appeared to be very low (although what happens at night may be different) unlike many of the things we hear/see through popular media about prisons in Canada/the US. One of my coworkers asked about homosexuality which the guards immediately said doesn't exist in the prison at the moment but admitted that it had occurred in the past and many of the fellow prisoners found it very disturbing. It was unclear if he was referring to rape or a consensual relationship. But as he pointed out, there really isn't any privacy at all in the whole compound.
We will be going to another prison, this time in Kampala, so we will see how that one stacks up.
Otherwise, I am entering my final week in Kampala which is sad. On the other hand I am really looking forward to the end of next week. I will be leaving next Friday for Tanzania to hike Mount Kilimanjaro and go to Zanzibar. Exciting!
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