From behind bars, these prisoners spread freedom

Life in prison shatters hope, dreams, dignity and beauty. It drains the spirit and humanity out of a convict.

In jail inmates are treated like beasts, and if one day they get out, they bear forever the prison curse on their forehead.

Whether guilty or innocent, resentful or remorseful, society turns them into neo-Cains.

In 1994, Morgan Freeman performed a majestic role in one of the best dramas ever produced by Hollywood, “The Shawshank Redemption”. Freeman, acting as Red, a convicted murderer, says to the parole officer, who had repeatedly denied his pardon pleas:

“there's not a day goes by I don't feel regret. Not because I'm in here, but because you think I should be. I look back on the way I was then: a young, stupid kid who committed that terrible crime. I want to talk to him. I want to try to talk some sense to him, tell him the way things are. But I can't. That kid's long gone, and this old man is all that's left. I got to live with that.”

For Red, “the first night's the toughest, no doubt about it. They march you in naked as the day you were born... that's when you know it's for real. A whole life blown away in the blink of an eye. Nothing left but all the time in the world to think about it.”

Jail holds a mysterious power over the destiny of its victims, those who have the terrible misfortune of falling into its claws. It turns human beings into beasts or saints, for nobody can go through it and remain the same.

In jail, time is torture, it is a time to reflect, to ask for pardon or cry for justice, to show compassion and mercy. Patience and hope are the only means to remain sane.

SUSAN GOES TO JAIL

Susan Kigula was 21 when she was sentenced to death in Uganda. Peter Ouko was in his mid-twenties when he landed in Kamiti Maximum Security Prison, and Thomas Harum Nyandoro was a young carpenter when he found himself being tortured at a police cell in Kisii.

Susan, Peter and Thomas, who were convicted and sentenced to death, all spent more than 20 years in jail. I met Susan for the first time at Langata Women’s Prison, where she was attending the inauguration of a library for the inmates. Susan is now a free woman and a lawyer.

She became one of the pioneers of the African Prisons Project (APP) leadership programme. There, she led a successful ground-breaking challenge on the constitutionality of the mandatory death sentence, taking into account mitigating circumstances, in the case of Susan Kigula and 416 Others v. Uganda, filed initially in Uganda’s Constitutional Court in 2006. The appeal was heard at the Supreme Court of Uganda in 2009.

Susan studied law while in jail by distance learning as an APP student. She first finished her secondary school and then proceeded to do a Common-Law Diploma and, finally, graduated with a law degree (LL.B.) from the University of London.

While still in jail, Susan opened amazing horizons to the most dejected and marginalised women in our society, the woman prisoner. She set up a school for her inmates, becoming both a student and teacher, for prisoners and wardens alike.

She fully embraced her student life afforded by APP and the University of London under its international programmes, taking part in mock trials and moot court competitions.

This helped her and her classmates build their confidence and capacity to present persuasive, logical and structured legal arguments before a critical audience.

As a litigant, Susan successfully raised before the Supreme Court, the highest Court in Uganda, issues of the unconstitutionality of the death sentence imposed on her and others.

The court revisited her sentence, to a term of 20 years. Further remission and commutation of time already served led to her final release in January 2016.

Susan’s passion for study, hope and change has already made a deep impact on the life of many. More than 400 other inmates have benefited from the ruling in her case, in Uganda and beyond.

AGENTS OF CHANGE

In 2016, Wilson Harling Kinyua, another APP student, and 11 others led a similar petition in Kenya’s Constitutional Court. Kinyua’s two-hour address led to a deep change in the perception and imposition of the mandatory death penalty in Kenya.

Kinyua had gathered his courage, determination and knowledge from his legal studies under APP’s programme as well as Susan’s petition to the Ugandan Supreme Court, to bring an immortal legacy to thousands of inmates on death row in Kenya.

At Kamiti, I also met Peter and Thomas. Peter, who had been in jail for 18 years, was respected by wardens and inmates alike. He was doing a distance learning law degree, with APP’s financial and technical support.

Thomas had been in jail for 23 years. He had published a book, Blind Justice that CJ Willy Mutunga launched in one of his visits to Kamiti, where he has been imprisoned in 1982-83.

In their past lives, these ordinary men and women might have been brilliant or mediocre, guilty or innocent, selfish or generous, but things had now changed.

Time in jail has turned them into heroes, great human beings, agents of change. The African Prisons Project looks at jails as dwellings of positive transformation, where emphasis here shifts more from punishment, retribution and isolation to reform, opportunity, dignity and true justice.

APP is creating a new generation of change-makers with a first-hand experience of the horrors and absurdities of the justice system.

DAILY LAW CLASSES

The prisons services in Uganda and Kenya are moving away from punitive imprisonment to correction, rehabilitation and transformation. Uganda boasts of having in place one of the best rehabilitation programmes in Africa and ranks fourth globally.

This is partly due to its innovative educational and rehabilitation programmes including opportunities to attend primary, secondary, vocational training and university education.

In addition, religious and sports activities are open to all prisoners and competitions between prisoners and their warders are not uncommon.

APP is contributing to this vision, one prisoner at a time. Currently, 63 prisoners and prison wardens in Uganda and Kenya are studying law under APP’s leadership programme.

In the APP law class, prisoners and prison staff attend their daily law classes together and support each other to study and prepare for exams. Pascal Kakuru, an inmate in the final year of his law degree, currently sits as the legal advisor on the Human Rights Committee at Uganda’s only maximum security prison in Kampala.

The Committee, which comprises both prison staff and prisoners, has responsibility for monitoring the human rights situation at the prison and reporting relevant issues to the administration.

Their role also extends to providing basic legal advice and support to the most vulnerable in prison, who are unable to afford the services of a lawyer.

The curse of jail is transforming lives in mysterious ways. In 2015 and 2016, more than 2,300 prisoners in Uganda and Kenya received direct legal support in their appeals, bail applications, drafting of submissions and other court documents from inmate law students, and this work led to the overturning of 12 death sentences.

Susan, Wilson, Peter and Pascal, together with Nelson Mandela, one of the greatest Africans of all times, that, “after one has been in prison, it is the small things that one appreciates: being able to take a walk whenever one wants, going into a shop and buying a newspaper, speaking or choosing to remain silent. The simple act of being in control of one’s person.”