The Covid-19 pandemic is taking a toll on the administration of justice in Uganda because courts have reduced their operations by 50 percent.
An investigation by the East African Center for Investigative Reporting (Vox Populi), shows that whereas a judicial officer would handle an average of about 10 cases each day before the Covid-19 outbreak, they are now handling only five.
This is in form of taking pleas, bail application and exchange of evidence before the cases are concluded.
With the reduction in court operations, the prison facilities are getting congested and the suspects are taking longer periods on remand and therefore delayed to get justice.
According to the statistics released by the Uganda Prisons Service in March, the number prisoners taken to court reduced by over 29.8 percent in the same month when Uganda started enforcing a Covid-19 lockdown, a raft of measures intended to contain the spread of the lethal virus that has turned the world upside down.
That number reduced from 33, 490 in February to 23,529 in March and according to our sources, the figure could substantially be above 15,000 in June 2020 because of Covid-19.
Uganda’s prisons have over 64,000 prisoners but the prison facilities can accommodate 17,304 which means the occupancy rate is three times higher than the built capacity.
In 2014, Uganda’s prisons were ranked the seventh most congested in the world and fourth in Africa by the International Journal of Criminology.
The congestion in prisons is now becoming a fertile ground for the spread of Covid-19 which has already killed just over 205 people in Uganda (as of early December).
The number of Covid-19 cases in prisons had increased from three in June to 511 in October with 14 staff getting infected, at the time we undertook this investigation.
The Spokesperson of the Judiciary, Solomon Muyita confirmed this threat to justice accessibility and shared that the arm of government was trying cases on the internet-based application Zoom but internet connectivity.
“You can’t bring witnesses to court. Some cases are handled via Zoom but that would mean that a magistrate needs a good laptop and stable internet connection. People at Prisons would also need a good laptop and internet but the majority of the courts do not have these facilities,” he told Vox Populi.
In Uganda, according to Muyita, it’s only Buganda Road Court which has facilities that connect to only Kitalya, Kigo and Luzira prisons out of 254 prison facilities across the country.
“That would mean a magistrate will have to move from Makindye Court to Buganda Road to handle cases via Zom and that would mean there would be no business in Makindye,” he said.
Even when the institution stopped giving judicial officers targets of handling and completing 25 cases per month for every officer, “It’s a big challenge. They can’t be appraised,” Muyita notes.
The problem was compounded by the increasing number of inmates as a result of indiscriminate arrests of people who violated the curfew guidelines at the beginning of the pandemic.
There has been a recorded 10 percent increase in the number of inmates since Uganda ordered a lockdown.
Between March and May, according to statistics from Uganda Prisons Service, the number of prisoners in Uganda rose from 59,000 to 65,000 and this put immense pressure on the facilities.
The Congestion was again compounded by government delaying to list the administration of justice among the essential services, yet the end result of those who violated the curfew were sanctionable by law.
Justice Henry Peter Adonyo wrote in an article published on the United Nations Drugs and Crime website:
“The accessibility of judicial processes, such as arraignments, the taking of pleas and the right to apply for bail were given little or no thought. This makes the legally provided timeline for the filing of civil matters and the required efficiency in the judicial ethical code difficult to maintain,” he argued.
The High Court Judge posited that such situations could lead to “despotism and abuse of human rights, because in such situations where self-restraint is expected with no oversight, there is a high possibility that those implementing the well-meaning guidelines will go overboard.”
Indeed, this overcrowding arose partly because of security agencies acting highhandedly and arresting 4,000 people defying curfews, travel bans and restrictions on using vehicles without stickers.
According to the spokesperson of the Uganda Prisons Service, Frank Baine, the number of inmates had dropped from 52% to 47% by November last year but in June, the numbers had risen to 53 percent.
For example, Luzira Upper Prison is chocking with more than 3,000 inmates, five times over and above its holding capacity of 600 inmates.
“You are also aware that Uganda has registered a number of cases of this disease. Any occurrence of cases inside the prison will be catastrophic considering the conditions that prevail,” Baine warns.
The first and biggest outbreak of Covid-19 was in Amuru Prison in northern Uganda with 154 cases a few months ago. This forced the Ministry of Health and World Health Organisation to evacuate prisoners and staff who tested positive.
Some of the suspects who were arrested for defying curfew guidelines would infect those already in Prison like in Mayuge where all the inmates had to be quarantined after a suspect who had been arrested tested positive.
The Executive Director of the Foundation for Human Rights Initiative, Livingstone Ssewanyana told Vox Populi that the current overcrowding is a danger to the lives of the prisoners.
“The current overcrowding which is attributed to indiscriminate arrests during Covid-19 is a big concern because these people cannot social-distance and when there is a case, it spreads very fast,” he warned.
The human rights advocate argues that Uganda’s judicial system is already strained and struggling with a backlog of cases and with Coivd-19, judicial officers may not achieve much.
“Therefore, Covid-19 is causing overcrowding occasioned by the arrests and the judiciary that is grappling with case backlog which means the process is slower to try these people,” Ssewanyana said.
Unfortunately, according to Doreen Namyalo Kyazze, the Programme coordinator of Penal Reform International, many prisoners are mentally ill.
“We saw in the first quarter of the year the numbers increase in an unprecedented manner and the sad part is that many people in prisons are mentally ill,” she said.
To decongest the prison facilities, President Yoweri Museveni pardoned at least 800 prisoners in June but these also increased the risk of spreading the disease into the communities.
The order to release the prisoners was issued in the administrative instruction sent by the Commissioner General of Prisons Dr. Johnson Byabashaija to all Prisons staff.
“This Administrative Instruction, therefore, serves to bring to your attention how it is spread, its symptoms and to guide the establishment of responses to absolutely prevent any circumstances that would further compromise the vulnerability of the prison environment,” the prisons chief wrote.
A group of human rights activists under the auspices of Advocats Sans Frontiers, Chapter Four, Legal Aid Service Providers’ Network, Muslim Centre for Justice and Law and National Coalition of Human Rights Defenders warned in a joint statement that these guidelines may not work.
The human rights formations argue that since the staff-prisoner ratio is estimated at one staff to seven prisoners, as the situation escalates and restrictive measures are imposed, there is a high risk that this will cause tensions and instability in prisons across the country.
“Prisoners will learn of the risks. With the tensions and threats, the low staff-prisoner-ratio will put a severe strain on the management on prisons as prison officers will face unprecedented challenges.”
Thousands of miles away in Columbia and Italy where riots erupted in prisons resulting in several deaths, the precariousness of the situation at hand became more obvious. Whether and how Uganda will navigate through the murky waters will be judged by time but the cost is high.
