Reworking of colonial era rules on prisoners feasible, let’s try it

He raised eyebrows in decrying the system as based on colonial-era rules and denying prisoners the sense of humanity to which they are entitled despite their criminal convictions.

If French newspaper readers were to be looking at these remarks, they would have wondered what fly (like tsetse) had bitten the minister.

Simbachawene issued the instructions at a meeting of senior Prisons Department officers from Mainland regions making an in-house assessment of the department’s performance.

His focus was definitely to turn prisons into a workforce rather than penal communities, in which case tasking the top leadership there to look into clothing, the food eaten, room for resting, and other human needs.

It is fair to say that the minister is trying to raise the morale of both warders and inmates so that they do a better – but it all poses vexing challenges.

One such alteration of the said rules would involve enabling prisoners to observe prayer days in a way that differs from other days on the week, even though they cannot go to houses of worship.

The idea is that they should look different from their routine outfits, as part of the wish to change inmates’ conditions on grounds that – ethically – they should be equal to other human beings.

It is possible that this orientation is unavoidable, what with the slogan “New Thinking, New Look and Hard Work for Self Sufficiency” in the Prisons Department, which the minister demanded that it be clearly discerned and observed with regard to inmates’ upkeep.

One lingering question here is the source of the maxim espoused in the slogan, what sort of philosophy it corresponds with, and what countries are capable of implementing it without encouraging crime. Without a far-reaching discussion, including in the National Assembly, it isn’t possible to say the debate is closed.

Still there is a way out for the government generally and the department in particular, and it comes under the maxim of ‘not wiring with saliva while there is ink’.

The best way to figure out how far such reforms can work is to try them, monitor the results and let more people contribute ideas meant to enrich the debate and see more meaningful results.

If the minister is already convinced that the department has worked hard enough on the slogan, perhaps there is mileage they have covered that the rest of us need to be put to some intuition.

In a word, it is possible to give the minister and the Prisons Department staff the benefit of the doubt on the matter, but just that, as a full-scale application of those methods would require sustained assessment of initial efforts.