Cabo Verde: State wants alternatives to jail to promote prisoner reintegration

The Cabo Verde general directorate of prison services and social reintegration on Monday signed a protocol with Hospital Agostinho Neto, which will extend to other institutions, to implement alternative sentences to imprisonment and promote social reintegration.

The protocol was signed by the president of the Hospital Agostinho Neto of Praia, Imadueno Cabral, and the director general of prison services and social reintegration, João Monteiro Delgado, who assured that the same document will be initialed with other institutions, public and private, such as churches, Red Cross or municipal councils.

After this, he added that a working team will meet with the country’s supreme councils of the public prosecutor’s office (CSMP) and of the judiciary (CSMJ) to make the project known.

The aim is for them to “start believing that society is prepared and able to efficiently have convicts serving alternative sentences,” said João Monteiro Delgado, indicating that alternative sentences could include carrying out unpaid work for the community.

The protocol aims to implement the national plan for social reintegration and the recovery programme + in all municipalities of the country, on the part of this department under the ministry of justice.

The director general also warned that the application of alternative sentences would not be universal, meaning that it would not be applied to all types of crime, but said he hoped that the measure would help integration into the labour market, preventing social exclusion and criminal recidivism, which is around 30 percent in Cabo Verde.

“It will be more useful, because being here in the middle of society, there will never be a break in family ties, affective ties and work,” João Delgado said, noting that the purpose of the penalty is not only repressive, but also to work towards social reinsertion.

The director said that in case of work in favour of the community, control will be done by the reinsertion technicians, in coordination with the beneficiary entities, and that only in a next phase can it be done with an electronic bracelet.

For the president of the University Hospital Agostinho Neto, Imadueno Cabral, it is an “excellent and far-reaching” policy measure and said that the institution he directs already works on health and social issues but assured that now they will be strengthened for a dignified life for people.

During the application of the protocol, the official said that the country’s largest hospital, which is also one of the largest public employers in Cabo Verde, will strengthen the training of inmates in the area of health, in order to support their social and family integration.

“We believe that this protocol will serve to strengthen our role with the ministry of justice, so that inmates can have good social reinsertion, avoiding stigma and discrimination,” said the manager.

According to the last known survey, at the end of 2018 Cabo Verde had 1,567 inmates, spread across five regional and two central prisons.

Of that total, the Central Jail in Praia held over 1,100 prisoners, totalling two-thirds of the prison population in the country, which has two other central jails in São Vicente and Sal and regional jails and Santo Antão and Fogo.