The Ugandan Minister of State for Internal Affairs Hon Ruhakana Rugunda says that the government is coming up with a policy where prisoners will be required to stay in their homes to ease congestion in prisons.

"Congestion is the biggest challenge faced by prisoners. A prison facility that is supposed to hold 9 094 inmates for example is now holding an excess of 10 029," he said.

The Minister was addressing participants at the Eleventh GOU/Donor semi annual workshop to review the Justice Law and Order Sector (JLOS) on peace in northern Uganda.

Rising crime rates and more punitive public conceptions of justice have increased the demand for imprisonment. Supply however has not kept up with demand. Prisons and jails have become seriously overcrowded. In a recent survey of corrections officials, police, prosecutors, public defenders, court personnel and probation officials, a majority overcrowding was identified as the leading problem of the entire criminal justice system.

More than 9 million people are held in penal institutions worldwide, according to the sixth edition of the World Prison Population List, compiled by Roy Walmsley at the International Centre for Prison Studies at King’s College, London. The US has the world’s highest rate of imprisonment followed by China. South Africa is the continent’s number one jailer.

Following visits to three maximum prisons in Tanzania, President Jakaya Kikwete has pledged to ensure that prison conditions improve and prisoners are treated humanely.

"The aim of my visit was to learn about what is going on and I promise that the government can look for solutions, particularly on the issue of overcrowding in prison," Kikwete said after he visited Keko, Segerea and Ukonga prisons, all in the country's commercial capital, Dar es Salaam.

For years, human rights activists have decried appalling conditions in Tanzanian prisons. Home Affairs Minister John Chiligati says that the country needs 156 prisons against the present 122, a deficit of 34 facilities. He adds that the prisons are meant to hold only 22,699 prisoners but their current population is 45,000 "making them scramble for even sleeping space".

West Africa is not immune. Nigeria this year acknowledged the sorry state of its jails and announced plans to free some 25,000 inmates still awaiting trial - some for as long as 10 years - in a bid to relieve overcrowding and bad conditions. The move could ease conditions for those left waiting on death row for years. The country has 548 prisoners awaiting capital punishment - 10 of them women - among a total 40,000 detainees, according to Ernest Ogbozor of Prisoners Rehabilitation and Welfare Action (PRAWA), Nigeria’s largest prisoners’ rights organization.

"The two main problems in Nigerian prisons are congestion and lack of food," says Hassan Saidi Labo, assistant to Nigeria’s prison inspector general.

Kaduna is a clear example. In December 2005, 957 detainees were crammed in 10 buildings - constructed nearly a century ago - designed for about 550 people. Labo says some prisons hold up to four times their capacity.In such conditions, just surviving is a daily battle, according to 54-year-old Felix Obi who was condemned to 27 years in prison in 1986 for drug trafficking.

"You fight for a scrap of blanket, a piece of soap, a bit of food or medicine, space on the floor and struggle against depression and becoming a victim of violence" says Obi.

Chiligati says that the government spends on average, 2,500 Tanzania shillings (about US $2) to feed one inmate daily. He emphasizes the need to resolve the congestion problem immediately because it is too costly for the government. In South Africa, it costs the state approximately R25 a day to keep an inmate in jail.

The Kenyan government is set to free 15 500 petty offenders in addition to 11 000 prisoners released in February last year, to ease congestion in prisons according to Vice President Moody Awori. Mr. Awori said this at the Kenyatta International Conference Centre in Nairobi during the United Nations Public Service Day whose theme was Improving Service Delivery.

Human rights activists attribute this congestion to delays in disposing of cases." A trial, especially in murder cases, can take up to ten years," says Hellen Bisimba, an official of the Legal and Human Rights Centre in Tanzania. In South Africa, more than 52 000 people behind bars are awaiting trial and have not been found guilty of any crime. In Uganda, 13 districts out of 20 cannot access chief magistrates. This results into delay of justice. Other sectors blame it on the government for making criminals out of peaceful people. They say that the current laws on alcohol consumption, drugs, gambling and prostitution among others have made criminals out of thousands of peaceful people who are no threat to anyone.

"People have control over their bodies," says Mbeto of Zimbabwe. "They have the right to decide for themselves what to eat, drink, breath, smoke or otherwise ingest. There is no need suppressing peaceful activities."

"I was incarcerated for three days, "laments Lubowa Kavuma of Uganda, "Just because I was found in Kampala city and I hail from the North. The fact that Joseph Kony operates in northern Uganda should not criminalize all the northerners!"

The Minister of State for Northern Uganda and Karamoja David Wakikona advises that lawyers should give chance to the Northern people who have just come back from the bush to learn the laws instead of putting them to prison immediately after committing a crime.

Businesses that are protected from competition are characterized by unmet demand, low quality and high cost. These are the conditions prevailing in our prisons. The cost of constructing and operating prisons has been rising faster than the general level of inflation. Cost is predictably less restrained where the government has monopoly over imperative services. If current conditions of demand and supply persist, the cost of imprisonment will continue its upward trend. Conditions are ripe for competition for private entrepreneurs to offer an alternative.

Competition is important to the penal system as a mechanism of evaluation, accountability and control. It introduces a market test of price that is absent under government monopoly. Driven by profit and reduction of cost, private firms will provide efficient service in order to stay in the market thereby relieving the pressures of overcrowding. Private firms should be contracted to run prisons.