Hamzah: Home Ministry seeks to lower costs of detaining prisoners

 

PARLIAMENT | Taiping MP Teh Kok Lim has asked the home minister to clarify the annual cost of handling inmates detained in prisons and detention camps for the last five years and the minister’s plans to reduce that burden.

This was asked by the DAP MP during the oral question-and-answer session in the Dewan Rakyat on Sept 15.

In response to the question, Home Minister Hamzah Zainudin stated that the total cost of maintaining prisoners over a period of five years (from 2016 to 2020) was about RM4.95 billion.

“In the period of five years (from 2016 to 2020), there were 317,674 prisoners nationwide who committed various wrongful acts.

“The total cost for the purpose of maintaining a prisoner in the jail (a day) is RM50. It involves costs for the purpose of providing equipment, facilities, medicine, food, control, escort, staff emoluments and others,” answered Hamzah.

With regard to initiatives to reduce this cost, Hamzah said there were efforts to strengthen and expand rehabilitation programmes in the community.

“The Home Ministry and the Prisons Department have and will continue to increase initiatives in line with the direction of the Prisons Department, namely that two-thirds of eligible convicts will undergo rehabilitation outside the prison walls.

“Through the implementation and expansion of rehabilitation in the community, it will assist the correctional process of prisoners in the community, and at the same time, reduce the burden of the government’s annual expenditure,” Hamzah added.

Other measures include the streamlining of vocational skills training and the job training system, collaborating with the courts and Immigration Department to expedite the repatriation of foreign prisoners who have completed their sentences and reviewing the Probation & Community Correction proposal from relevant parties (which suggests various alternatives to imprisonment).

Additionally, Hamzah said the implementation of the release of prisoners by the license is one measure that is being taken to solve the matter.

“Through release by license, prisoners who are eligible can follow, among others, job training programmes where many offers have been received from the manufacturing, construction, services and agriculture sectors.

“The Licensed Prisoner Release Board, which was established by several external parties from the Malaysian Prisons Department, met every month and from October 2020 to July 2021,” he said.

Hamzah added that a total of 2,867 prisoners were selected to participate in this programme. - Mkini