During the launch of the plea\r\nbargaining session on April 25 at the Uganda government prisons in Arua, the\r\ninmates’ supervisor who is a former priest currently on defilement charges,\r\nSantos Wapokira, presented a petition to the Judiciary.
In their petition, the prisoners\r\nexpressed worry over missing case files, delayed trial and congestion.
"There are rampant cases of missing\r\nfiles which has made some of us to stay for long on remand without being\r\nheard,” he said.
\r\nSpeaking to the team from Judiciary led by the Principal Judge, Hon. Justice\r\nDr. Yorokamu Bamwine, the districts’ regional prisons commander, Mr. Allan\r\nMushabe said that the prison is congested with suspects whose files cannot be\r\ntraced.
\r\n"Whenever we present these suspects to the courts for trial, we are always told\r\nthat their police files are missing. This leaves us with no option but to\r\nremand them further in the already congested prisons,” he said.
\r\nHe said that the prisons which have the capacity to accommodate only 250 people\r\nnow accommodates over 900 inmates, some of which are inmates on ministerial\r\norders, debtors, the elderly, petty offenders, juveniles and the mentally\r\nderanged.
Mr. Wapokira pointed out that the inmates on ministerial order who have stayed on\r\nremand for over seven years and the elderly of whom one is 104 years have been\r\non remand for six months on the allegations of defiling a six year old girl,\r\nshould be given a priority and their cases handled expeditiously in order to\r\ndecongest the prisons.
\r\nHon. Justice Dr. Bamwine in his remarks urged the inmates not enroll for plea\r\nbargaining so as to get out of prison.
\r\nHe ordered courts, both the magistrates and the high court to dismiss cases\r\nagainst the inmates whose files are missing or alternatively, the Director of\r\nPublic Prosecutions to create duplicate files for trial.
\r\nHowever, the DPP, Hon. Justice Chibita denied knowledge of the missing files\r\nand said he has not received any complaints.
\r\n"I will not tolerate issues of missing files in my office and I have not\r\nreceived any complaint so far,” he said.
\r\nHe called upon the prisoners not to wait for the lengthy trial and instead\r\nembrace plea bargain if they feel or know that they are guilty.
The\r\nnumbers
According to the 2015 Judiciary Court\r\nCase Census, there were 114,809 pending cases as at December 9. Of these, 36,313\r\nare pending before the High Court accounting for 31.63 of case backlog.
In terms of case category, more than\r\n2,500 cases have not been handled for more than two years. According to the\r\nPrincipal Judge, Plea Bargaining is one of the new innovations by the Judiciary\r\ndesigned to bring down backlog as well as decongest prisons.
\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nMr Andrew Khaukha,\r\nthe technical advisor for Judiciary as well as national coordinator for the\r\nPlea Bargaining programme, says they have registered 1,000 accused persons\r\nunder the scheme, of these, 70 are from Arua Prison.
Posted 10th, May 2016
