Africa-Press – Mozambique. The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) is going to fund the introduction of the electronic bracelet in Mozambique, the Minister of Justice said on Monday, estimating that the measure could go ahead this year.
“We’re going to introduce the electronic bracelet this year. We’re still in October, and we believe it won’t go beyond December. We’re already working on it, we’re already in the administrative phase,” said the Minister of Justice and Constitutional and Religious Affairs, Mateus Saize.
The minister, who was speaking to journalists on the sidelines of the National Conference of the National Association of Mozambican Jurists (Anjur), which is taking place today in Maputo, said that UNODC, as a cooperation partner, will ‘finance the project’, whose equipment suppliers have already been identified.
Lusa reported this month that the Mozambican government plans to issue the first 3,000 electronic bracelets to parolees in 2026, when the country is facing a need for alternative sentences to address prison overcrowding.
According to documents supporting next year’s budget proposal, the measure is set to be implemented on the ground starting in the second quarter, with the first 500 bracelets to be fitted to inmates.
In the same sector, in the Economic and Social Plan and State Budget (PESOE) 2026 the government set a target of providing free legal assistance to 351,147 ‘economically deprived’ citizens, training 464 justice professionals, including judicial magistrates, public prosecutors, public defenders, registrars and notaries, and ‘involving 7,652 inmates in vocational training and 7,480 in general education’, as well as installing a system for warning of pre-trial detention periods.
Mozambique currently has almost 160 prisons, including regional, provincial and district prisons.
In July 2023, the Mozambican government announced its intention to build at least 10 new district-level prisons across the country.
On 11 July, the vice-president of the Mozambican Supreme Court, Matilde Almeida, admitted difficulties in applying ‘alternative sentences’ in the prison system, due to inmate escapes, warning of overcrowding in prisons.
Mozambique is struggling with overcrowding in its prisons, which house around 21,000 prisoners, compared to an installed capacity of 4,498, according to previous figures from the Ministry of Justice.
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