PRISON MANAGEMENT

Prisoners' Committees. (from the Assessment Report for Ethiopia)

A special phenomenon in Ethiopian prisons is the presence of prisoners’ committees that operate very professionally and rather autonomously. They run – with the full consent of the governor - a kind of shadow-administration. Every zone of a prison elects its own committee. All zones elect members of a central prisoners’ committee. The commander of the prison police can reject elected candidates however. The central prisoners’ committee in Addis Ababa runs its own office, where an administrative function is kept. Every member of the committee has a specific task (education; welfare; health; financial matters; the management of prison shops, etc.). One member of the committee keeps records on the eligibility of fellow-prisoners for parole. In short: where prison management fails to provide services, prisoners committees try to handle matters by themselves. Zonal prisoners’ committees are empowered to elect fellow prisoners for remunerated jobs. They have certain disciplinary power too and can ‘sentence’ fellow prisoners to sanctions like collecting garbage, carrying loads or clean the premises. These zonal committees determine which prisoners are recommended to the central committee for entering the procedure for parole. If the central committee accepts a nomination for parole it will send the file to the prison governor who will refer the case to the proper court of justice.¹

Prison governors are very happy with these prisoners’ committees and regard these as very useful instruments for maintaining good order in their institutions, which they cannot manage properly themselves, for want of sufficient trained personnel.¹

One prison is divided into 6 zones, each of which has its own Prisoners Committee. The zonal Prisoners Committees are elected by the prisoners. The head of the prison police may reject candidates for these committees. This Central Prisoners’ Committee consists of: a chairperson, a secretary and members responsible for: the social department (health, education, training, work); the financial management of the central shop, the small shops, the tearoom, the profits of which are used to support the prisoners; the inspection of the shops and the economical-planning of the shops. One committee-member runs the department of Safety and Justice, which (among other things) keeps track of the dates of release (parole) of prisoners. This is necessary because the prison administration is not failsafe in this respect. It also tries to speed up procedures, which is necessary because the criminal courts are coping with a huge backlog.²

The prisoners’ committees are empowered to assign jobs and to mete out disciplinary punishments. To this end every zonal prisoner’s committee disposes of its own ‘judges’, each of which is responsible for one cell. Disciplinary sanctions are: 1) physical exercise; 2) garbage disposal; 3) transporting materials; and/or 4) cleaning of the zonal compound. ²

Serious infractions of prison discipline are dealt with by the prison administration. Internal regulations regulate the power of the prisoners’ committees.[4] Cases of alleged abuse of power by members of the prisoners’ committees are reported to the unit cell-heads and handled by the zonal and if necessary by the central prisoners’ committee. If this proves to be not sufficient the case can be transferred to the prison director.²