Recently, the Commissioner General of Prisons Dr. Johnson Byabashaija was widely quoted in the print media as having informed a certain meeting that the Uganda Prison Service would soon allow prisoners to exercise their conjugal rights. This is not the first time prison authorities are making this pronouncement. And I am sure it is not going to be the last. It is always easier said than done. It has now become sort of an accepted norm for government officials to announce grandiose proposals which sound good to the targeted audience yet they don't mean what they say.
Conjugal rights for prisoners is one of the highest levels of enjoyment of rights that is uncommon in both developed and developing countries alike. Although human rights activists would want these rights to be recognized in all countries, in most cases it is simply not possible because of the issues involved to provide these rights.
Countries which currently allow conjugal rights include: France, Canada, Denmark, and Saudi Arabia. Regulated conjugal visits are allowed in USA, Brazil, Mexico City and Russia.
Of all the states that allow these freedoms, Saudi Arabia tops the list in providing the best amenities and systems needed for this right to be fully enjoyed because it was among the first countries in the world to allow this practice.
In fact Saudi laws go an extra mile of allowing inmates to have the right to get married while in prison, including those on death row. No country in Africa, including liberal South Africa can afford the luxury of allowing sexual rights in prison.
In the USA, inmates have to meet certain requirements to qualify for this privilege. Inmates on death row are not permitted visits in US. Even then conjugal visits also known as "extended family visits are currently respected and upheld in only six out of fifty states of USA. These are: California, Connecticut, Mississippi, New Mexico, New York, and Washington.
Conjugal rights have been rightly neglected because they are not easy to be guaranteed and implemented. To put the debate in context, human rights activists are not against prisons department allowing prisoners to have sex as a right.
Sex after all is a right to every human being. What we don't understand is how some prison official makes the announcement without substantiating it and makes the public and the inmates to wait for such a promise to be implemented in vain.
I have personally visited Luzira prison many times to check on the living conditions of inmates. I have attended many workshops in various places where prison representatives have had to present one complaint- lack of resources to make prisoner's rights a reality.
So how can the same people promise to provide what they know is out of their means. Sex in prison is a dream in Uganda today.
I agree that the prisons department is one of the least funded by government. The basic things that should ordinarily be provided to inmates are always lacking.
So, if thee basic necessities can not be provided how would they guarantee that prisoners would have sex in a dignified way worthy of a human being, not in a beastly manner.
For instance, prisons authorities are supposed to put up structures for that particular purpose with private rooms where essential commodities such as condoms, soap, toilet paper beddings etc, are supposed to be supplied.
Is Luzira Prison capable of doing this? Countries that are implementing conjugal rights in prisons affirm that it is a difficult issue to enforce. Even in its enforcement many more rights are violated therein either conditionally or because of other attendant factors.
It is important to note that sex is purely a private matter between individuals. There is no way therefore the prison authorities would determine when and how an inmate would want to have sex.
Some of the questions that keep lingering in my mind include: How many hours each prisoner would be allowed with their partners? How about people with multiple partners? What of inmates who may want to have sex with fellow inmates? How would they treat prisoners who may need to have sex but don't have partners? Wouldn't they end up raping other inmates because of the many imaginations that would run through their minds as fellow in mates go in designated places to have sex? All these questions need clear answers before one can think about introducing sexual rights in prisons.
Incarceration means that people who are serving sentences have to have some of their rights restrained until such a time when they can regain their freedom after a stipulated time by courts of law.
Most important among these rights may include rights such as freedom from movement, limited right to privacy, limited right to contact with outside world among others.
There are however other rights which are supposed to be upheld at all times even when someone is in prison.
Rights such as the right to food, the right to shelter, the right to appear before a competent courts etc, fall under this category.
I am aware that prison conditions in Uganda have greatly improved given what it was in the eighties and nineties, but it has not yet reached a level where prisoners can be accorded the right to sex because it is impracticable.
It is a right that can wait given the fact that there are currently more pressing needs that need urgent attention to make lives of prisoners worthy living, even though they are in prison.
Providing conjugal rights to prisoners in Uganda is like taking an emaciated, skeletal refugee from Durfur in South Sudan on space adventure to the Moon and planet Mars. It may not make much sense to such a refugee. Neither would it to the rest of mankind.
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