TANZANIA: DEATH ROW INMATES KEEP INCREASING

April 3, 2014: during a two-day training workshop for Tanzania Prison Service, the Executive Director of Inmates Rehabilitation and Welfare Services Tanzania (IRaWS-T), Deputy Commissioner John Nyoka, said currently death row prison cells hold three inmates instead of the required one.
He said the whole concept of rehabilitation of prisoners is being compromised by the death penalty, stressing that inmates on death row cannot be rehabilitated as they await their execution by hanging.
He added that the Constitution should be specific on what life sentence imprisonment is, stressing that this should substitute the death penalty.
In his “Overview of Tanzania Prison Services, positive development, challenges and prospects in management of prisoners under death sentence,” Prison Officer Dominic Mshana said the delays in execution of the inmates have resulted in unnecessary congestion in the prison cells since they cannot be mixed with the other prisoners.
He explained that the last execution took place in 1994, adding that those waiting to be executed live in agony, resulting in agitations and inmates making demands that if not met, riots would erupt in prisons.
Statistics from Tanzania Prison Services (TPS) show that, as of 15 October 2013, there were 364 inmates in various prisons waiting for the execution. According to the TPS legal commissioner, Juma Malewa, 86 of the country’s 364 death row inmates have appealed before the Court of Appeal Tanzania.
The issue of the death penalty was not included in the first draft of the new constitution and neither is it in the second draft currently under discussion in the Constituent Assembly. (Sources: dailynews.co.tz, 04/04/2014)