Africa-Press – Mauritius. The Standing Committee on Trade, Industry, Finance and Investment (TIFI) of the Southern African Development Community (SADC) Parliamentary Forum called on Thursday, in Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe, for the promotion of budgetary transparency, improvements to prison infrastructure and ensuring access to adequate medical care for prisoners.
The call is included in the report presented on Thursday (5) at the 57th Plenary Session of the SADC Parliamentary Forum (SADC-PF), which has been taking place since Monday (2), by the Chair of the committee, Angolan MP Ruth Mendes, in which she encourages parliaments to carry out intensive monitoring of investments in prison infrastructure, including where there are public-private partnerships and in cases where the private sector is directly involved in the management of prison establishments.
According to the commission, prison supervision is not only a governance concern, but is intrinsically linked to good financial management, such as rational supervision of public resources, for the effective prisons’ management, good infrastructure and adequate medical care for inmates.
The Committee urged Member States to ensure that prisons are adequately budgeted to fund alternative approaches to incarceration, such as fines, diversion programs, which have the potential to reduce incarceration rates and free up resources.
The Committee believes that national parliaments should prioritize the allocation of resources to alternatives, reintegration and rehab programs for prisoners, to help reduce recidivism, and to make allocations for early crime prevention strategies, mainly among young people.
It calls on civil society organizations to work with parliaments to build their capacity to monitor budget implementation strategies in prisons and to carry out intensive oversight of investments in prison infrastructure.
Data presented by the commission indicate that the prison population in all SADC Members State goes around 400 thousand, with the majority of these inmates being in South Africa and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).
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