Give Prisoners Family Time And Conjugal Rights - CCC MP
Kambuzuma Member of Parliament, Willias Madzimure (CCC), says Zimbabwe has to amend its laws to allow prison inmates to be permitted family time and to exercise their conjugal rights, as happens in other countries.
The Government is currently working on the Prisons and Corrections Services Bill, which seeks to reform legislation governing prisoners.
Madzimure argued that allowing family time for prison inmates will enable them to keep their families intact whilst they serve their sentences. CITE quoted Madzimure as saying:
It is important that we have a special day at the end of every month where the prisoners can interact with their families because we have already punished the inmate by incarcerating him.
I think it is important that we also work along those lines and do something to make sure that we have got full rehabilitation of prisoners.
A prisoner who spends ten years in prison after leaving a one-year-old child, the child will be nine years old by the time he is released.
For him to go home and say, “I am your father, I am back” and expect the child to really embrace the father and understand that this is the father, will be a torrid time for both the prisoner and the child.
Madzimure also said when a married person or one in a relationship, is arrested and imprisoned, their partners should be allowed to visit them to provide conjugal rights. He said:
I would want to raise the issue of conjugal rights for prisoners. In Sweden, the moment you are arrested, you are interviewed and you submit the name of your wife, if you are married and if you are a married woman, you submit the name of your husband.
If you are a person who is not yet married, you submit your girlfriend’s name.
So every Thursday, you are allowed to be visited by your wife or husband in private. The reason is very simple.
The issue of sexuality is not a secret and for us to expect someone to go to prison and spend ten years alone in prison without enjoying his or her rights, I think it is wrong.
This can be corrected so easily by making sure that we have prisoners with private accommodations that can be used for that purpose because let us not assume that there is nothing happening in prisons.
A lot of things happen in prison – so let it be clear that this is the facility that we have in prisons.
Last week, President Emmerson Mnangagwa pardoned 4 279 prisoners under the latest Presidential Amnesty.
According to the Zimbabwe Prisons and Correctional Services (ZPCS), a total of 4 166 men and 104 women will be released from the country’s 47 main prisons and eight satellite prisons.
More: Pindula News
