Statistics from the Zimbabwe National Statistics Agency on the prison population make interesting and disturbing reading and should open doors to debate and the need for reform.
For a start, almost a quarter of the 24 068 people detained in prison at the end of March this year were remand prisoners, awaiting trial or awaiting the results of their bail application.
This is a very high figure. Magistrates and judges usually decide bail applications fairly promptly, with some being decided on the day of the remand hearing, so the person is never in custody before the trial, while most other applications are normally sorted out within a couple of days, one way or the other.
This does leave a lot of people remanded in custody, with the courts unable to grant bail because of unacceptable risks on the evidence available. And the figures suggest some are in custody for some time, if the total number of remand prisoners is almost a quarter of the total.
It is important that trials take place promptly without delays, or at least delays driven by the prosecution or the presiding magistrates and judges, so that the innocent can be released and appropriate penalties set for the guilty, which will not always be a prison sentence. But even if it is a prison sentence, it has a fixed term. The prisoner knows the day of their release, while a prisoner on remand drifts in an island of uncertainty.
Admittedly we have accused who will do almost anything to delay their trial, or at least spin it out, even if they are remanded in custody. This is difficult to understand, although there is a difference to how a sentenced prisoner and a remand prisoner are treated in custody, but the problems of overcrowding exist for both.
We probably also need to move towards the concept of "time served", that the time spent in custodial remand is deducted from any final prison sentence. Judicial officers, when passing sentence, do refer to the time already spent in custody, but rarely is there any precise calculation with a day spent in custodial remand meaning a day is deducted from the final sentence imposed on a convicted criminal.
The other point to note is the remarkable imbalance between men held in remand custody or serving set sentences and women. Of the 24 068 people held in prison at the end of March, 23 401 or 97,2 percent were men, and just 667 or 2,8 percent were women. That is a man is 35 times as likely to be in prison as a woman.
Women are equally open to temptation and it is difficult to believe that they are so much more honest than men. One obvious major difference is that women commit far less violent crime, and violence is a major factor when a magistrate is looking at a prison term. Almost all women prisoners are inside for crimes of dishonesty, rather than the violent crimes of murder, robbery, rape, assault and the types of crime counted as mugging, that form a large block of the male prison population.
Organised crime and criminal gangs tend to exclude women. For example the major police effort now in progress against touts at bus terminuses has probably yet to arrest a woman. But we should note that when it comes to the police campaigns against illegal foreign currency dealers and drug dealers there are a lot of women included, perhaps not a majority but certainly more gender equality in these criminal activities.
The lack of violence and organised crime in so many criminal activities by women also reflects in sentencing. Dishonest women are more likely, at least in proportion, to be given options of community service rather be locked up in a cell since serious aggravating circumstances are not present.
And a fair amount of female crime does not even lead to arrest. Employers faced with a dishonest female employee are more likely to just fire the person, rather than call in the police, at least so anecdotal evidence suggests although no one has done any proper research on this.
But the huge disparity between the number of women in jail and the number of men does suggest that this is an area open to research, to find out why so fewer women come before the courts on jailable offences, and to see how this can be applied in society.
One main reason why ZimStat gathers statistics and issues reports is not just to keep statisticians occupied, but to produce data and analysis that is useful for society as a whole, dispelling myths and providing the hard facts that can lead to better societies and better communities.
And these prison statistics suggest that we need to continue making progress in having earlier trials, and the courts are aware of the problem and have been speeding up trials and the Prosecutor General has been reporting far speedier clearance of criminal prosecutions. But with several thousand remand prisoners, we still need to work on this.
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We might also need extra sorts of bail. At the moment almost all bail when granted is a modest sum paid in, and the locking up of travel documents. A lot more bail could consist of handing in assets, such as title deeds. These would not preclude use of assets, unlike bail which does preclude use of the cash handed in for the court to hold, and so could be set at much higher levels.
In the past there was more use of guarantees from family and friends, the sureties. These were assurances that someone else would pay a large sum, or even risk loss of a major asset, if the accused did not turn up. The courts, with some justification, felt that if someone was prepared to pay such a large sum they would take steps to ensure the accused did turn up, and in any case felt that the accused was a reasonable risk for remand out of custody.
The male-female prisoner disparity suggests a whole range of research work into why females might be more honest, or if they are roughly equally dishonest why they are either not caught or why they commit crimes less likely to involve a prison term. The results could lead to some education for a lot of men.
