Acting Commissioner of the Fiji Corrections Service Salote Panapasa says that the gross overcrowding of the prisons and high representation of young offenders which is 50 percent of the total prison population brings high imprisonment costs.
While making the Fiji Corrections Service submission to the Parliamentary Standing Committee, Panapasa says that this relates to the non-utilization of alternatives to imprisonment by the court due to lack of infrastructure in place to supervise and manage offenders in the community.
Panapasa says 215 inmates are serving sentences of less than 12 months.
She says that the cost of one inmate per day is $55, the cost per month for an inmate is $1,650 while it is $20,075 per inmate for a year.
Panapasa adds that the cost of the 215 inmates for 6 months amounts to $2.128 million.
She says that in the past, there was an option of releasing inmates on Compulsory Supervision Order or probation instead of sending them to prison.
This was according to the Community Based Project that was conducted in 2006 on the trend and probation of prison numbers.
There are 1,542 convicted offenders serving their time in prison.
The Corrections Service is proposing that prisoners that would be eligible for probation are first time minor offenders.
These people would have to follow the process of being evaluated and counselled before a final decision is made by the Fiji Corrections Service.
The Corrections Service has also proposed to harmonize the legislation so that the Corrections Service is responsible for the management of offenders both inside and outside the prisons and that the Community Based Corrections Bill be changed to Community Based Reformative Bill to reflect the integration of inmates into the communities.
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