By Surihe Gaomas
RUNDU
Government can save a huge chunk of approximately N$2,5 million a year, if it effectively places all petty crime offenders under the current community service project.
Currently, there are over 9 000 inmates in prisons and police holding cells. Overcrowding in prisons countrywide as well as trial awaiting police cells is thus a serious problem.
Statistics between the years 2003 and 2004 show that out of the 4 106 inmates in the country’s prisons, 51 percent of them were convicted for non-serious crimes like shoplifting and bag-snatching.
Taking care of such petty offenders places a heavy financial burden on the Ministry of Safety and Security and Government as a whole.
After a successful pilot project in the Caprivi Region, the Minister of Safety and Security Peter Tsheehama visited the Kavango Region last week to familiarize himself with the work that the Committee on Community Service Orders (CSO) has done in the region so far.
“I am so impressed with Katima Mulilo. Fifty-nine of the petty crime offenders are doing community service and four have defaulted but were re-arrested.
They will be sent back to prison to complete their sentence,” said Tsheehama. He was addressing senior traditional councillors, religious leaders and regional committee members of the Community Service Orders (CSO) in Rundu last Thursday.
He noted that the aim behind petty offenders doing community service instead of serving prison sentences is to cut down costs, while treating offenders in a more rehabilitative way.
In Namibia, provision of community service orders to replace prison sentences has been in the status books since 1953. Yet this policy remained dormant or unused due to the fact that no mechanism was in place to enforce it.
Ultimately, over the years there was unnecessary overcrowding of prisons countrywide which Tsheehama stressed could have been avoided if community service was used as a rehabilitative punishment for non-serious first-time offenders.
What has been happening in most prisons is that large numbers of petty offenders were placed together with prisoners who have committed serious crimes, thus turning petty offenders into hard-core criminals.
“We are doing a disservice to ourselves as we are creating more hard-core criminals at the end of the day. This is what we must avoid. Therefore, we should separate them. Let us not give a chance for these petty offenders to be turned onto hard-core criminals, but take them back to doing community service in the community where they did wrong,” added Tsheehama.
He added that there is no need to create “undesirable elements within our society, so let’s save our communities from being contaminated especially by petty crime offenders”.
The ministry has further identified various community programmes for petty offenders. The programmes include cleaning yards, government offices, tidying up cemeteries, hospitals and working in government plantations.
This should however be done in the communities from which the offenders originated.
“This project was only a pilot project for one year. Now that we have seen the positive results we now know it’s feasible and can be workable in all 13 regions of the country.”
While Namibian citizens are accorded community service orders, foreigners are not included in the programme.
Unlike the Caprivi however, the Kavango Region was not that successful with their juvenile offenders’ programme as they only managed to send 11 people to this project last year. One offender defaulted.
In one specific case, such a juvenile was sent to Grootfontein Prison after having committed an offence in Rundu. However, authorities felt that it was not necessary to serve the sentence that far.
The CSO Project is mainly based in the Kavango, Caprivi, Oshana and Kunene regions.
The minister also held a similar meeting at Chetto in western Caprivi.
The CSO Programme will be publicised through the media and other information means in order to create public awareness.
Meanwhile, the Ombudsman’s “Special Report on Prevailing Conditions in Police Cells” states that in places like Rundu Police Station, the five cells that were meant to accommodate 50 prisoners are congested with a current number of 117 detainees, leaving the building in a dilapidated state.
Furthermore, the report reads that toilets are not enough. People in cells 1 to 5 end up using one toilet and the general conditions of facilities are very bad.
Preparation of food is unhygienic and the kitchen area needs to be upgraded while most of the utensils need replacement.
The CSO project is geared towards bringing down the high numbers of inmates in prisons.