Overcrowded prisons
FROM PAGE 3
Kamal Hossain, senior superintendent of Chattogram jail.
“We are checking them for symptoms during intake, and if they show any symptoms we will quarantine them. This is what the district civil surgeon recommended to us, considering our situation,” said Kamal.
The newly-built Dhaka Central Jail in Keraniganj will not be able to quarantine new prisoners either -- as it is overcrowded already.
“I have over 10,000 prisoners. The jail’s capacity is 4,097. We are keeping new intakes under observation but not quarantining,” said Iqbal Kabir Chowdhury, senior superintendent of the Dhaka jail.
Similarly, Tangail District Jail’s Superintendent Mohammed Abdullah Al Mamun informed this correspondent that he would not be able to quarantine freshly-arrived inmates for 14 days.
The jail he runs currently houses some 1,100 prisoners, while it is made for only 467 prisoners.
“If a new prisoner is showing symptoms, we will quarantine the patient. But otherwise, they are released into the general population,” Mamun informed The Daily Star.
Barishal Central Jail too will not be able to quarantine prisoners for 14 days, said jail authorities.
“We can house 50 to 60 prisoners in the quarantine ward, but we get around 30 new prisoners every day. Housing them for 14 days might be a problem,” said Proshanto Kumar Banik, the jail superintendent.
“If we observe any symptom in the prisoners, we will send them to Sher-e-Bangla Medical College Hospital immediately,” he added.
The contingency plan in case of an infected prisoner varies from jail to jail. Some have plans of isolation wards in the jail’s hospital while others will send them to general hospitals.
Rangpur Central Jail authorities informed The Daily Star it will also only quarantine suspected cases, already housing twice its capacity at around 1,500 prisoners.
The superintendent of Cox’s Bazar District Jail also has no space to quarantine the new intakes, as per the prisons department’s orders.
“It is not possible to quarantine. We have only kept the 45 prisoners from Myanmar separately,” said jail Superintendent Md Mokammel Hossain.
The Cox’s Bazar jail houses some 4,500 inmates but was actually built for 530 prisoners only -- meaning they house nearly nine times the amount of prisoners they can actually hold.
While all prisons are crowded, the Cox’s Bazar District Jail packs more people per square feet than others.
For example, the Cox’s Bazar District Jail, Mymensingh Central Jail, and Narayanganj District Jail are all built on approximately eight acres of land. But while the population of the first is 4,500, the other two accommodate 2,100 and 1,800 prisoners respectively.
Narayanganj District Jail has an official capacity of 300, but houses six times its capacity, jail authorities told The Daily Star.
Mymensingh Central Jail has space for 1,000 prisoners but houses a little more than twice its capacity.
However, both managed to clear out spaces to quarantine the new intakes for 14 days.
Narayanganj District Jail managed to separate a building to keep new prisoners coming in, for 14 days, said Superintendent Shubash Ghosh. “We can house 500 prisoners there,” he said.
Similarly, Jahangir Kabir, superintendent of Mymensingh Central Jail, kept aside two wards for 200 new prisoners.
“We have a daily intake of 10 to 15 new prisoners. They will be kept in a quarantine ward for 14 days, following which they will be taken to a buffer ward for two to three days before being rehoused with the general population,” he said.
Kashimpur-1, 2, and 3 prisons were also able to set aside quarantine wards by turning “division cells”, into general wards. Unfortunately, these three prisons share one doctor between them and Kashimpur-4 (a high-security prison). The combined prisoner population of Kashimpur-1, 2 and 3 is 5,941.
Khulna too put aside a quarantine ward for 100 prisoners but has no doctor -- they only have a pharmacist.
HYGIENE AND SANITATION STILL A CHALLENGE
Former Inspector General of Prisons Brig Gen Syed Iftekhar Uddin opined that the state of overcrowding in prisons will affect hygiene and sanitation there.
“There is one toilet for ten prisoners. Overcrowding means more people will be using one toilet,” he said.
“Besides, not all prisoners are convicts. Most are actually still undergoing trial, and they could potentially be exposed to coronavirus. When I retired in 2018, only 20 percent of the population were convicts -- 80 percent were undergoing trial,” he added.
The prisons do not have an adequate number of hygiene and sanitation facilities for the large number of inmates they’re holding, and advised hygiene practices are difficult to follow as a result.
The prisons are also relying on self-reporting and shared thermometers to screen prisoners for fever.
“We are not technologically sound,” said Mamun, Tangail jail’s superintendent. “Because we have no equipment to check, we are asking prisoners if they have a fever, or if they had a fever in the past week.”
“We don’t have thermal scanners or infrared thermometers yet, but we have asked the ministry to provide us with those,” said the AIG of Prisons Monzur.
Khulna jail Superintendent Omar Faruk, however, informed that they obtained infrared thermometers.
SC ORDER TO NOT PRODUCE UNDER-TRIAL PRISONERS
On Thursday, the Supreme Court administration directed jail authorities not to produce under-trial prisoners before lower courts during case proceedings till further order, as a precaution to coronavirus outbreak.
Supreme Court Registrar General Md Ali Akbar issued the notification under the instruction from Chief Justice Syed Mahmud Hossain.
In the notification, he said producing prisoners under trial from the jails before the courts during hearings of bail petitions and other case proceedings are very risky due to the prevailing situation.
In light of that, under-trial prisoners cannot be carried by prison vans or any other transport and cannot be produced before the courts during case proceedings, it said.