Our penitentiary system needs proper funding
Richard Moleofe | Friday January 20, 2017 14:29
Unfortunately the worst happened in Francistown this past weekend when the Gerald Estates Prison had several of its awaiting trial inmates vanishing into thin air.
When this department was transferred to the Ministry of Defence, Justice and Security, most of us thought that was the beginning of great transformation for its workers and the establishment itself. It’s now been a while and we have not seen any significant changes on the ground.
The prison escape in Francistown should become a turning point in the way the prisons establishment has been regarded by the government and as well as members of the public. The men and women working there are found in what I would term as Botswana’s toughest job.
If there is anything in life that should never visit any individual in their careers is boredom and low morale. But that is exactly how most of us view the department at the moment. The staff in our penitentiary system is so demoralised to a point where even the prisoners they keep have a higher level of excitement about life.
The most important thing for any worker is remuneration. Equally, our prison guards are as human as anybody and they need healthy salaries too. In the last ten years, Botswana Government civil servants have not had any significant increase in as far as salaries are concerned. In the past, civil servants benefited from a few changes such as scarce skill allowance. It is clear that most employees of the department like any other disciplined force hold very few of such individuals who would attract such an allowance.
Most of the civil servants serving under the different disciplined forces depend entirely on their salaries and not allowances. So if it takes so long without a proper review of salaries, morale is bound to be low.
It is not only an issue of salaries for prison warders; it also goes with their conditions of service. In one sentence this is how I can describe their work; they are overworked and overstretched.
Let us take a good life lesson from a mule. This is one of the toughest animals that mankind has created. It is one of the best manipulations that man has achieved with nature because mules do not occur naturally and they do not reproduce.
Our government has to some extent treated our prison warders like mules. The employer like the owner of the mule is only interested in results. Mule owners always get higher output from the lowest input in these animals and that is exactly what we are trying to achieve with the way we treat our prison staff.
The employer needs to study the behavioural patterns of his workers in as much as the mule owner knows how his animals behave. If a mule is overworked to breaking point, it ceases to work. No matter how had the owner might try to beat it, it will not be moved either to the left or to the right. So if government continues to undermine these men and women who risk their lives for the good of us all, one day they will reach a breaking point and like a dear mule, they will not be able to pull the cart anymore.
Moral has had a direct bearing on the recent prison escape and government should be forewarned on future incidents of a similar nature. The Gerald Estate prison is a new state of the art facility where escapes should never occur. It has an advanced fence and sophisticated watch towers. With this in place, it now boils down to issues of skeletal staffing and moral.
It is common for prison escapes and riots to happen around the Christmas holidays and that is a global phenomena. It happened in Gerald Estates with the dramatic escape of the most dangerous criminals. This followed in the heels of the riots in a Mpumalanga prison in South Africa and a massacre in a Brazilian jail.
At that time of the year, prisoners loathe the idea of being confined while the rest of the world is in a festive mood. This gives birth to the ideas of indiscipline and even the thought of attaining unlicensed freedom. Living in the 21st century requires new approaches to prison management. Security gadgets such as CCTV cameras and the different sensors have come to replace the human factor to a large extent. These are called force multipliers. They multiply personnel because they neither grow tired nor go on annual leave. And these are the things that Sillas Motlalekgosi needs to invest into if government is willing to give his department appropriate funding. The Chinese government has invested heavily in force multipliers in their prisons to an extent of deploying drones in cases of prison escapes. The drones become very useful in patrolling large prison areas such as the ones which incorporate farms. Prison escapes in China are now a thing of the past because each prisoner has an electronic tag placed on their leg. The moment they move out of the prison perimeters, the monitors go off and immediately a serious manhunt ensues. Leg monitors are not anything expensive and our government needs to invest in these tools to prevent escapes. To those in parliament, please know that these men and women under Motlalekgosi’s command risk everything to protect us. Parliament therefore needs to appropriate the right funding for their salaries and equipment.
Recently prisoners took advantage of the skeletal staffing in a Selebi Phikwe prison where they bludgeoned a prison warder at lunch time. The fellow is now recovering in hospital with very serious wounds to his head and torso. For them, danger is always lingering. We rest because they are keeping the most dangerous criminals in the safest places. They risk it all for this nation.