Home Minister Mohamed Shihab announced he will close down Feydhoo Finolhu jail as soon as possible.

Shihab said the institution was originally intended as a rehabilitation centre, but inmates were not provided with rehabilitation services by the health ministry.

“It’s not a jail as such and we don’t have the facilities for it…there’s no perimeter around it,” he said.

The decision to close down the minimum security jail comes after a highly critical report by the Human Rights Commission Maldives (HRCM) this month, which found that prisoners were free to escape and could smuggle items into the jail with ease.

The HRCM report also said the prison was under the inmates’ control and due to the lack of “batons and truncheons”, prisoner officers were unable to keep inmates in check.

Shihab, who was elected home minister earlier this month, said he agreed with the commission’s findings and recommendations, but his decision was not related to the report.

He added re-structuring the prison system was one of his top priorities. “Conditions in these places are not good. We need to rehabilitate,” he said. “Most are on drug-related charges so most of the work has to be done on rehabilitation.”

HRCM report

Following the HRCM’s visit to the minimum security prison in May in its capacity as the National Preventive Mechanism, the team observed the jail was under the control of inmates who were free to roam the island.

“There is no mechanism to maintain security at the jail,” the report said.

Employees are difficult to distinguish from inmates as they do not wear uniforms and live in a state of fear as there is no clear division between the inmates’ areas and their workspace, it added.

“The jail office does not have a lock and some employees have to sleep among the prisoners.”

Further, the report noted, there are no records on the inmates providing information about the charges against them, the lengths of their sentences or their release dates.

On the health centre, it said there were only adhesive bandages and ointments in addition to needles, syringes, IV bottles and a variety of pills and medicines, all of which were under the care of inmates.

The report found that the jail did not comply either with the Prison Act or the United Nations Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners, but recommended it adhere to these regulations without delay so that the prison is brought up to standard.

Date: 19 June 2009

Source: Minivan News