Haiti - Justice : The unsustainable costs of detention...

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Haiti - Justice : The unsustainable costs of detention...
11/10/2013 11:36:34

Florence Elie, the Protector Citizen notes that the daily increase in the prison population in Haiti, which now exceeds 10,000 inmates, is composed of a majority of defendants which results upstream of excessive arrests, regularly carried out by the National Police of Haiti (PNH), often under the impetus of the Government Commissioner and downstream, to the disability and the clear congestion of our judiciary. A situation "which reflects a repressive penal policy, whose implementation results in an exorbitant bill and unjustified, but also unsustainable. In addition to being economical, this cost is safe, moral and human."

"Economic cost !
It goes without saying that the arrests excessive, the disproportionate imprisonment and excessive judicial delays result in heavy economic burden, too heavy for the meager resources available to our state. Our deficiency of funds particular result in a significant and reprehensible inability to support prisoners, while promoting a certain permeability of our judicial and police system to the corruption in one hand, while encouraging the other hand, an increased dependence for international assistance called by definition to fade.

Moral cost :
If Haiti seeks to attract foreign investors, the latter are insecure and held at present by the unanimous international condemnation, alleging among others, consistently and with vigor, the sub-human conditions, which prevail in our prisons and deep dysfunction of our judiciary. Ratios accused/convicted and space/convicted prevailing in our territory, are ranked among the worst in the world, the National Penitentiary in Port-au-Prince having the distinction of being to the archetype of the prison/hell. Obviously, the opprobrium both national and international regarding the fragility of our rule of law, is hard to reconcile with the image of a state that wants to be open for business.

Human cost :
The drama of the detention in Haiti tears too many families. It has become synonymous with profound physical and mental suffering, affecting a large majority of persons presumed innocent in the endless waiting of treatment of their case. Real backstage of horror, our prisons despise everyday the principle as fundamental that elementary, of respect for human dignity. In view of the foregoing, the Office of Citizen Protection (OPC), as a national institution for the promotion and protection of human rights, can only see the negative and costly review of our repressive penal practices: a luxury that our society can not, nor should afford."

HL/ HaitiLibre