Malawi the 23 prisons are run by the Malawi Prison Service. Zomba Prison, the only maximum security facility, is holding prisoners with long sentences or serious offences. Severe overcrowding throughout the prison system provides a conducive environment for the rapid spread of HIV and TB. Since the onset of democratic government in 1994, the prison system in Malawi has changed. A Chief Commissioner of Prisons, who works under the Minister of Home Affairs and Internal Security, heads the Malawi Prison Service. The system has its head office in Zomba and is divided into five divisions: Operations, Farms, Prison Clinic, Prison Training School and General Administration. Interesting for the Mundende Project is the fact that Zomba also has a juvenile department.
Malawi, as a developing country, faces many problems inside its prisons, especially the fast spread of HIV and TB, which are mainly caused by the rapidly increasing number of inmates. For example, Maula Prison was intended to house 800 inmates but now holds approximately 1,805 inmates, all but 24 of them men. Malawian prisons are estimated to exceed their capacity by 200%.
These large numbers make for extremely unsanitary conditions. This in combination with bad nutrition gives an abnormally high death rate. Prisoners deal with dirty water, foul toilets and intermittently working showers. Cells built for 50 or 60 people now hold up to 150 people. Prisoners sleep on blankets on the floor too tightly packed even to turn around. One inmate awakens the rest each night for mass turnovers. The most privileged inmates sleep on their backs, ringing the walls of the cell. Everyone else sleeps on his side. There are no prison uniforms, no blankets with which to cover themselves, and no soap. Inmates have a monotonous diet of nsima and beans with water.
These conditions, together with rampant diseases like scabies and TBC are the main reasons that for instance Zomba Prison loses one in 20 inmates annually. When prisoners are found with these diseases, they are not often given medical attention or quarantined, which allows the diseases to spread even further. Malawi prisons with HIV/Aids patients have high death rates due the prisoners’s weak immune systems worsened by the lack of an appropriate diet and anti-retroviral therapy. Several organizations have challenged the government through the courts to consider having a well-balanced diet for the prisoners who are HIV positive.
Another major issue is the lack of legal representation available to the average Malawian. Malawi’s 12,000,000 to 13,000,000 citizens have 28 legal aid attorneys and eight prosecutors with law degrees. There are jobs for 32 prosecutors but salaries are so low that vacancies go unfilled. Therefore, except in special cases like murder and manslaughter, almost all accused go to trial without lawyers. Malawi’s High Court, which has to pass judgment on all capitals crimes, has not heard a single homicide case in the last year, simply because there is no money to assemble lawyers, judges and witnesses for hearings in the localities where the crimes occurred. There are many cases of people who sit in jail simple because their case files were misplaced.
The Mundende Project aims to develop ideas and new insights for local and international NGO`s with the latest criminological insights, in order to help these NGO`s in their quest to help the inmates of Malawi.
