OFFICIALS at Connemara Open Prison in the Midlands province, said
they had been rendered redundant after all 65 inmates at the institution
were recently released under the Presidential Amnesty.
Zimbabwe Prisons and Correctional Service (ZPCS) spokesperson,
Elizabeth Karinda-Banda, confirmed the development yesterday, saying the
situation had seen prison officers carrying out duties like tending to
cattle and prison fields, which were normally assigned to inmates.
She, however, said it was a temporary arrangement for prison
officials to attend to such jobs since it takes careful selection for
prisoners to qualify to be admitted at the open prison.
“The open prison selection board is in the process of sitting to select prisoners who meet the required criteria,” Banda said.
“To date, the board has sat and 14 inmates were selected from WhaWha
Prison and there are now at Connemara. The process is continuing and
more suitable inmates will be recruited from all the country’s prisons.”
Banda said by its nature, the open prison system could not
accommodate inmates convicted with certain crimes, hence, the delay in
the recruitment process.
“But basically, we are saying, as ZPCS, that our projects at
Connemara cannot stall because inmates were released through amnesty,”
she said.
“It is a temporary setback, which we are addressing and very soon everything will be normal.”
Last year, there were calls by the government to decentralise open
prisons to all provinces, as a way of re-integrating offenders back into
society.
Connemara caters for men and there have been calls to have an open
prison for women, with preliminary plans put in place a few years back
to have it [female open prison] established in Marondera. Newsday
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