ZANU PF leader, Robert Mugabe has issued an order granting thousands of prisoners release on Presidential Amnesty.
The Government Gazette of 23 May 2016 says that President Mugabe has ordered the country’s prisons to release up to 5700 prisoners on his clemency.
However, prisoners serving time for violent crimes such as murder, armed robbery, rape and others alike will not be eligible.
The country’s major prisons started releasing the prisoners on Tuesday. Though official figures of how many each prison is releasing were not available, ZimEye.com is reliably informed that a great number of female prisoners in the country are part of the amnesty.
The country’s prisons are currently holding about 160% prisoners to it’s capacity and battling to sustain the huge population. Starvation, sicknesses and death is the order in almost all of the country’s prisons due to over population and lack of resources.
Until this week, the Justice ministry had for some time been calling on the system to consider merely penalising offenders with non-custodial sentences as the prisons are failing to cope.