Seven men, 11 women and 4 juveniles have been released from the Pademba Road and the Freetown Female prisons after they had been convicted by a Freetown magistrate court for loitering and jailed for six months. They include a pregnant woman who gave birth behind bars and a 16-year-old girl who was concerned she might miss out on her school-leaving exams starting shortly. According to a press release from AdvocAid, the civil society organisation that campaigned for their release, several of the detainees were injured, allegedly by the police.
AdvocAid had bumped into them in prison by chance during a Christmas visit to female prisoners and called for a summary review of the case by the Chief Justice. The release says the convictions led to the near doubling of the number of female prisons, stretching the already under-resourced facility. It says the exact details of the loitering offence were unclear but it is supposed to have happened between 10am and noon on a Tuesday in December 2011 around the Tower Hill area of Freetown. The release says the most of them were outside or even in their homes conducting normal daily activities while they were picked up.
AdvocAaid says even though the law stipulates a maximum of one month in prison the usual sentence for loitering is a caution and a discharge or a fine of Le 50,000. It questions therefore why the freed prisoners were jailed for six months. They had already served 7 weeks in prison before their release.
Among those convicted was a woman who was 9-month pregnant and had to give birth in prison and a 13-year-old boy. 36 of them had been sentenced to prison but the release says only only 22 were actually in custody.
