buildings and infrastructure, 3) staff, and 4) systems. Overcrowding in prisons, prison legislation, and legal aid services in the criminal justice system were also the topics of a regional conference held at the Police Staff College in Mirpur, Dhaka on 6-7 October 2010. The conference, jointly hosted by the Ministry of Home Affairs, BRAC, BLAST, MLAA, and GIZ, was opened by both the Minister of Home Affairs and the Minister of Law, Justice, and Parliamentary Affairs.
The project supported drafting of a new prisons act in 2011. The draft act, which conforms to international standards governing the management of prisons and treatment of prisoners, represents a major change from the present jail code, which was written in 1864. The draft has a number of key policy implications: it establishes a civilian Prison Service and staff and calls for appropriate classification of prisoners and a mechanism whereby prisoners can progress from a highly secure, closed environment to a minimum security prison. It also establishes an independent inspection mechanism. Starting in 2012, a new contribution to the project, funded by the Spanish Agency for International Contact: Deputy Chief, Planning Wing, Ministry of Home Affairs or Ms. Promita Sengupta - promita.sengupta@giz.de Development Cooperation (AECID), is supporting examination of issues of access to justice for poor women, who, in most cases, end up in jail either for petty crimes or on murder charges. In the latter case, many of these women were victims of years of domestic violence.
The keynote speaker was Kiran Bedi, the legendary prison reformer, who discussed the reforms she carried out at the Tihar Jail in India while working there as the Inspector General. The 107 participants from five South Asian countries unanimously adopted the Dhaka Declaration on Reducing Overcrowding in Prisons in South Asia, which was forwarded to national governments in the region and to the United Nations Commission on Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice. A group of officials from several ministries, the Prison Directorate, and the Bangladesh Police undertook a number of visits abroad to observe first-hand how other countries organize their prison systems. According to one member of the mission, the trip to England was a revelation: “It never occurred to us that first-time offenders did not need to be treated like criminals or that classifying our prisons as high, medium, or low security might be more efficient.”
The project is working with community policing forums to design community-based prevention measures that support released offenders who are in danger of (re)offending and ex-offenders who are released back into their communities and seeking to rebuild their lives. At the same time, skills development for prisoners inside the prisons allows the poor to develop a livelihood, so that they do not resort to petty crime for survival after their release.
Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH - German Development Cooperation GIZ - Office Dhaka German House Road 90, House 10/C Gulshan 2, Dhaka 1212 Bangladesh
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A senior official in the Ministry of Home Affairs, who today oversees the development activities of Bangladesh’s 68 prisons, knew what the prisons were like already during his university days. “As a student activist, there was only one thing I was afraid of,” he recalls, “and that was being put in jail. Everybody knew how dangerous the prisons were. It was my nightmare.” Today, this official knows a lot more about the difficulties that prisons face. Bangladesh’s prisons are hopelessly overcrowded: they house around 70,000 people in facilities designed for only 30,610. The situation in several individual prisons is far worse: Dhaka Central Jail, for example, holds around 10,000 prisoners in a facility designed for 2700, including around 600 women in a space designed for 134. The prisons are attempting to deal with a problem that is not of their making. Too many people are arrested; too few are granted bail.