Edwin Musoni
7 July 2007
Kigali — Rwanda has set a phased policy for its reduction of its prison population.
Currently, Rwanda has about 80,000 prisoners living in 16 prisons nation-wide.
The Minister of Justice Tharcisse Karugarama told The New Times yesterday that government's policy to decongest prisons was divided into three categories.
"We will use three existing legal systems in applying this policy including; the community service TIG (Travaux d'Intérêt Général), release on parole and also the presidential pardon."
Karugarama didn't disclose the numbers of prisoners to be decongested each category.
The TIG system, as well as presidential pardons, has already been used. Prisoners who applied for parole would be considered as a way of decongesting prisons.
"The decongestion policy will be applied across the board. It's not only those charged with Genocide that would benefit, but also other convicts would be considered," Karugarama said.
"We intend to release a reasonable number of prisoners, currently we are carrying out a survey in all prisons to get the biggest number of prisoners that can be released."
Rwanda's Vision 2020 targets at least one prison in each province.
Earlier, Karugarama had hinted that prisoners would be release in two batches; the first in September and the other three months later.
This will be the fourth time Rwanda applies a general release on parole.
According to the Rwandan Judicial system, parole is not a mandatory right rather a judicial consideration and those to be released must have served a quarter of their sentence and applied for parole. Release on presidential pardon has applied since 2003 and up to 70,000 prisoners have been released on provisional decreed by President Paul Kagame most of them elderly, sick and minors.
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