PRISON walls do give some people a false sense of security. Do not for a moment think that the concrete walls can keep Covid-19 from entering the prison.
Let’s not forget, it’s a virus that brings the disease. Having jumped from animals, it is now jumping wildly from people to people.
And it doesn’t discriminate whether it’s a hardcore criminal or Movement Control Order (MCO) offender.
To Covid-19, all hosts are welcome. And it loves crowds. Malaysian prisons may not be the world’s most crowded — that dishonour belongs to Haiti, according to World Prison Brief, Institute for Crime & Justice Policy Research (WPB) where 80 to 100 inmates share a single cell — but they are overcrowded nevertheless.
WPB, whose database covers 223 jurisdictions, tells us why. In December, Malaysia had 74,000 inmates in 52 prisons, when they are designed to hold only 52,000.
An occupancy level of 142.3 per cent can’t be said to be conducive for social distancing that is required to stop Covid-19 from spreading.
And sending MCO offenders to the limited cells is only going to make prisons more overcrowded. The novel coronavirus demands novel ways of handling offenders.
The courts and the prison authorities may have to do a big think. Whatever this is, do not take the path to privatise prisons. This will handcuff us to the ways of free marketeers, whose priority is reward, not reform.
And to be amply rewarded, everything in these for-profit prisons will be sold, including five-star cells, to inmates with lots of money. This is an incentive to commit crimes, not to return reformed men to society.
The United States prison system is a stark example of how free marketeers have destroyed the criminal justice system there.
Malaysia can do a few things to not travel this treacherous path, especially during these pandemic days. Firstly, do not add to crowded prisons by sending MCO offenders there.
Instead, consider meting out community service under the Offenders Compulsory Attendance Act, as suggested by Prisons Department director-general Datuk Seri Zulkifli Omar.
This move helps solve two things. One, it stops making the overcrowding worse. Two, this ensures that MCO offenders, who are mostly youngsters and first-time lawbreakers, are kept away from bad hats.
There are enough studies to show how bad influence works behind prison walls. Like the novel coronavirus, bad hats do jump from one really bad head to not so bad a head. Secondly, take the crowd away from prisons.
Again, there are two ways of doing this. One, prison authorities must find ways to send foreign inmates, who are estimated to number at least 35,000, home, diplomatic difficulties notwithstanding. Shaving off 50 per cent from the current occupancy rate will bring the prisons within its design capacity.
Two, foreign inmates who have been handed down mandatory death sentence for crimes such as murder, drug trafficking, kidnapping and security offences may pose some repatriation challenge. But this isn’t without a solution.
A really big, fat think will suggest resentencing. Former Court of Appeal judge Mah Weng Kwai did point this way out at a prisoners’ rights forum in October. It may not have been appealing then, but it sure is now.
Covid-19 has changed the way we live our lives and run the economy. It sure can change the way we run the criminal justice system.
