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Plan for prisoners to work away term in community

STAFF CORRESPONDENT
The government is planning to introduce community service for prisoners.
Prisoners, who are convicted in criminal cases and sentenced to jail for a maximum of five years, would be freed on condition of giving prescribed community service and treated as community prisoners. The community prisoners would be allowed to stay with their families and have to report regularly to an official assigned by the government apart from doing community service.
The cabinet committee on jail reforms is working on the proposed system that is still on the drawing board.
The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) has already offered to provide the government with both technical and other assistance for introduction of the community prisoner system.
Law Minister Moudud Ahmed told The Daily Star yesterday that the
cabinet committee would have to detail the system.
Primarily, the committee is thinking that the community prisoners may be attached to the nongovernmental organisations (NGOs) working on community development or providing community services.
The officials of the NGOs, whom the prisoners will be attached to, will have to report to the authorities about the performance and behaviour of the community prisoners.
The system of community prison is working well in many countries, including in some Indian provinces, said Moudud.
Jorgen Lissner, country representative of the UNDP, officially made the offer to the law minister when he called on him on Thursday.
He was leading a team of the Penal Reform International, a New York-based organisation working on prison and penal reforms.
Moudud also told the team that the government would amend the Code of Criminal Procedure to empower the magistrates to grant bail to the accused in the case of small crimes, for which the maximum penalty does not exceed five years of imprisonment.
"The measures are being taken to ease the heavy burden on the country's prisons," Moudud told The Daily Star.
Some 75,000 prisoners currently cram 26 prisons that have space for only 24,075.