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2 inmates die per day at Zim's biggest prisons
Simplicious Chirinda, ZimOnline
October 09, 2008

http://www.zimonline.co.za/Article.aspx?ArticleId=3755

At least two inmates die everyday due to hunger and disease at two of Zimbabwe's biggest jails, a grim statistic that a local prisoner's rights group said on Wednesday illustrates the dire conditions in the country's badly overcrowded jails.

The Zimbabwe Association for Crime Prevention and Rehabilitation of the Offender (ZACRO) said conditions in prisons across the country had deteriorated over the years with the Zimbabwe Prison Service (ZPS) out of cash to buy drugs to treat HIV/AIDS and tuberculosis, rampant in jails because of overcrowding.

The ZPS neither had money to buy enough food for inmates and in some cases even failed to raise cash to pay for pauper burials for those who succumb to disease and hunger in jail, ZACRO national director Edison Chiota told ZimOnline.

At the two worst affected prisons - Chikurubi and Harare Central - inmates were sometimes given only a meal a day, ZACRO said.

Chiota said: "There is no nutritional food in all of the country's prisons. The prisoners just eat in order to survive, especially at Harare Central prison and Chikurubi prison where the situation is worse because inmates are sometimes only given one meal a day.

"The two prisons are losing not less than two people a day and to make matters worse the Zimbabwe Prison Service is not able to provide a proper pauper burial for some of these prisoners."

ZACRO is a non-governmental organisation involved in protecting the rights of prisoners while also working to prevent crime through rehabilitation of offenders and their re-integration into society.

Justice Minister Patrick Chinamasa and ZPS boss Paradzai Zimondi were not immediately available to respond to the group's claims of overcrowding, disease and death in prisons.

Chiota said a survey of the country's 55 prisons carried out by ZACRO this year showed that the jails were holding a total of 35 000 prisoners, more than double their designed carrying capacity of 17 000 inmates.

The ZACRO director said an amnesty granted to some categories of prisoners by President Robert Mugabe in June appeared to have had little impact on the inmate overload.

"I can tell you that a cell designed to carry 10 prisoners is usually packed with 40 people," Chiota said. "The county's jails are designed to carry a maximum capacity of 17 000 prisoners but a study we did from January to June this year shows that there are close to 35 000 prisoners in the country's jails."

With Mugabe's government preoccupied with trying to find money to buy food, essential medicines, fuel, electricity and for salaries for hundreds of thousands of its workers, prisons have been virtually forgotten.

More often than not, inmates in many of the country's jails have to survive on a single meal per day of sadza (a thick porridge made of ground maize) and cabbage boiled in salted water because there is no money to buy adequate supplies.

An outbreak of pellagra disease in 2007 killed at least 23 inmates at the notorious Chikurubi Maximum Security prison. Pellagra is a vitamin deficiency disease caused by shortage of vitamin B3 and protein.

A parliamentary committee that toured Chikurubi and other prisons in 2006 was shocked to find inmates clad in torn, dirty uniforms and crammed into overcrowded cells with filthy; overflowing toilets that had not been flushed for weeks as water had been cut off due to unpaid bills.

The committee said in a report that the conditions in prisons were inhuman. However nothing much has been done to date to improve conditions due to a lack of resources.

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