A new Auditor General’s report has revealed that Uganda Prisons are overcrowded to a tune of over 2000%.
The Auditor General, John Muwanga’s December 2019 audit report says whereas the Uganda Prisons Services (UPS) Strategic Investment Plan 2016/2017-2019-2020 made a commitment to build more prisons to decongest the existing ones and reduce occupancy capacity from the baseline of 293% to 286%, prisons remain overcrowded.
“I undertook an assessment of the current population and occupancy at 12 prisons and noted that occupancy percentages were over 2,000% which is 10times the holding capacity and 9times above baseline capacity. This is majorly due to high prisoner population growth without a corresponding increase in prisons holding capacity,” Muwanga said while handing over the audit report to Speaker Rebecca Kadaga on Wednesday.
He warned that there is a risk of case backlogs escalating to unmanageable levels which negatively impacts on the objectives of reducing case backlogs in the Justice, Law and Order Sector.
The report further painted a grim picture into case backlog in Uganda with Statistics from the last six years 2013-2018 relating to detection, prevention and investigations of crime by police show improvements in performance caseload per CID investigation of crimes at 1:45 against recommended caseload per CID years of 1:12 cases per year.
Actual performance indicated that for the last five years, the total reported cases were 1,251,344 out of which 302,745 (24.2%) were successfully investigated, leaving a balance of 949,599 cases.
