To decongest East Africa’s most congested prisons in Uganda; the judiciary has sought and secured Shs 4bn.
According to deputy Chief Justice Steven
Kavuma, the money will help the cash-strapped judiciary run the limping
criminal court sessions and reduce on the case backlog.
“Each quarter, the judiciary will handle
at least twenty criminal sessions to tackle case backlog in criminal
trials. The judiciary leadership is working with the government to
increase the number of judges and magistrates to ease and hasten the
adjudication of cases,” Kavuma said on Wednesday at the annual plea
bargaining conference held at Kabira country club in Kampala.
Kavuma’s remarks come on the coat-tails
of recent reports which suggested that Uganda has more than 38,000
inmates instead of the recommended 15,000, which makes its prisons the
most congested in the East African region. In his speech, Justice Kavuma
urged the Principal Judge Yorokamu Bawmine to market, sensitize and
roll out plea bargaining throughout Uganda.
“More than 2,500 cases have been
disposed of since 2014. Plea bargaining has taken root and possesses
great potential to improve on the landscape for criminal justice in
Uganda,” Kavuma said.
Plea bargain is an alternative dispute
resolution mechanism. Under plea bargain, a criminal suspect agrees to
plead guilty to a particular charge in return for either a lenient
penalty or some deal from the prosecutor. The programme has been
instituted ostensibly to reduce on the case backlog and at times it has
promoted reconciliation between the victims and accused persons.
Justice Kavuma, who stood in for Chief
Justice Bart Katureebe, warned that more resources are needed if plea
bargain is to succeed. Read more
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