The country is experiencing prison overcrowding, with more than a thousand inmates over the capacity of the facilities, while more than 11,000 people are in preventive detention.
Angolan prisons hold 24,068 inmates, of whom 11,664 are in pretrial detention, one of the main causes of overcrowding, which represents 2% of the total prison population, the country’s Penitentiary Service reported on Tuesday.
The information was disclosed by the deputy director of the Administrative Area of the Penitentiary Service, Cristóvão dos Anjos, during the opening of the seminar on “Criminal Procedural Law: Alternative Measures to Imprisonment and Rehabilitation”, co-organized with the Ufolo Studio. Center.
According to Cristóvão dos Anjos, the penitentiary services, with an installed capacity of 22,554 places, currently control 24,068 inmates throughout the country, of which 12,404 are prisoners.
Cristovão dos Anjos said that There is an overcrowding of 1,514 inmates, representing 2% of the Angolan prison population.calling for greater procedural speed on the part of the bodies that administer justice.
The Deputy Director of the Administrative Area of the Penitentiary Service indicated that there are currently 2,664 inmates in penitentiary centers in excess of preventive detention in the preparatory instruction phase and 889 in the judicial phase, making a total of 3,553 inmates in this condition, corresponding to 14% of the total criminal population.
The seminar, he considered, allowed “reflect on the numerous problems” that hinder the management of the country’s 43 penitentiary establishmentsAmong the highlights were overcrowding, excessive pre-trial detention, the situation of expired sentences, the lack of sending sentences and copies of final judgments, as well as the slowness of the trial process.
The National Director of Penal Control, Emílio Mendes, said that the 43 prisons in Angola house mostly men and four house mostly women, housing 590 inmates.
Emílio Mendes proposed the application of additional sanctions, because the number of hospitalizations in penitentiary establishments “is high”, also complaining about the delay in processing cases and suggesting that visits by prosecutors to penitentiary establishments be carried out periodically, in order to speed up the judicial process.
According to Emílio Mendes, several inmates with excessive preventive detention, either in the preparatory phase or in the judicial investigation, I’ve been in this situation for over a year..
“Unfortunately we have detainees in preventive detention for more than one, two or three [anos]”We have this information without being tried in the first instance,” said the official, adding that there are still inmates who were taken to prison by the Public Prosecutor’s Office before the judge of guarantees came into operation a year ago.
One of the consequences of overcrowding, continued the national director of Penal Control, is the rearrangement of inmates, explaining that those who are in preventive detention cannot be transferred from one place to another.
Source: Observadora
