New Vision

Prisons Boss Wants Execution Privatised

The director of operations in the Uganda Prisons Service, Mr. Moses Kakungulu, has proposed that the execution of convicts be privatised if the death penalty cannot be abolished.

 Kakungulu said the hanging of convicts brutalises the prisons service whose role is simply to reform and rehabilitate offenders into good citizens.

 Kakungulu, who represented the commissioner of prisons, Mr. Joseph Etima, during a Uganda Law Society workshop on Saturday, said the detention period for those on the death row should be short and that the executions are done publicly to have a deterrent effect rather than confining them within Luzira prisons.

 "The death penalty has been shown and proven to be a cruel, inhuman and degrading punishment with political, economic and social repercussions which outweigh its objectives," Kakungulu said.

 "In case the state finds it too difficult to abolish this penalty, the prisons service should then be relieved. The duty (of executions) could be assigned to a special body or unit that has nothing to do with prisoners and whose role would not jeopardise their other objective and relationship with prisoners. This experiment was tried in China and seems to be working," he added.

 Kakungulu released statistics of executions by the various post independence regimes. The figures showed that during Amin's 9-year rule, 38 executions were done, while 52 have been done in the last 15 years.

 The workshop, on the theme: "Does the State have the right to kill?" was funded by the Konrad Adenaeur Foundation.

 The Uganda Law Society president, Mr. John Matovu and the Uganda Human Rights Commission chief, Ms. Margaret Sekagya addressed the workshop.

 Sekagya said the death penalty should be abolished for rape, defilement and treason offences but retained for murder and aggravated robbery only.

 She recommended a countrywide sensitisation on the subject, and that Uganda adopts a progressive approach to eventual abolition of the death penalty.

 She said the penalty should be scrapped because there was no redress in case someone was discovered to have been sentenced in error.