KUALA LUMPUR: The proposal to segregate prisoners based on their crimes can be realised if the government is committed to building new prison facilities or expanding existing ones and staffing them with sufficient workers.

Criminologist Datuk Dr P. Sundramoorthy said affordability was the main issue as Malaysia’s 39 prisons house around 70,000 inmates.

He said as such, financial cost was a key factor in separating hardcore prisoners from minor and first-time offenders.

“These (segregating prisoners) have financial implications as we need to solve the overarching issue of overcrowding in prisons.”

He said the entire prison “supply chain” had to be upgraded by increasing the number of facilities and staff, as well as extending the buildings and rehabilitation programmes.

“If they (the authorities) say they can use the existing facilities, how do we maximise space when a majority of the prisoners are light offenders?”

Sundramoorthy was referring to the initial stages of the Movement Control Order (MCO), when Prisons Department director-general Datuk Seri Zulkifli Omar wrote to the Federal Court chief registrar Ahmad Terrirudin Mohd Salleh asking the judiciary to stop sending MCO flouters to jail as it added to the overcrowding problems in prisons, which
made physical distancing impossible.

Sundramoorthy, who is a Universiti Sains Malaysia associate professor, said experts and non-governmental organisations had long been advocating for the segregation of prisoners based on the classification of their crimes — from light to serious.

He said the suggestion, however, was previously shot down by the authorities due to the budgetary constraints of the criminal justice system.

“The reality is that there are financial constraints related to the upkeep of the prison system. We need to look at the bigger picture. We may want to take many steps forward, but the root issues have yet to be addressed.”

Sundramoorthy described the proposal as proactive and said the method had prevented prisoners, especially light and first-time offenders, from honing their “skills” and networking with other convicts in prisons.

On its effectiveness in preventing recidivism, he said, the system must first be implemented before its success rate could be gauged.

“They must put in place a long-term monitoring mechanism of how the prisoners fare after their release. This has to go on for years or throughout their life for us to have a definite idea (of the effectiveness of segregating prisoners).”

He, however, urged the government to ensure that the evaluation was done by independent experts instead of parties that were “friendly” to the authorities.

Sundramoorthy said the same criteria should be adopted for the evaluation of the rehabilitation programmes to prevent any bias.

He said priority should be given to first-time and light offenders for rehabilitative programmes as resources were restricted and the groups had a better chance of turning over a new leaf.

Sundramoorthy said the programmes should be customised for the classification of criminals — from serious, drugs, non-serious — to ensure that once the convicts are released, they
remained clean.

Home Minister Datuk Seri Hamzah Zainuddin had previously said the ministry proposed to segregate light offenders from serious ones to reduce recidivism and allow the latter group to undergo rehabilitation programmes.

He said this would prevent recidivism among light offenders, who had mingled with hardcore prisoners.

Hamzah added that 65 per cent or 45,106 of prisoners were drug abusers.

Former Prisons Department director-general Tan Sri Zaman Khan Rahim Khan said segregating prisoners was a good idea provided it could be executed successfully.

He added that this would address the issue of overcrowding in prisons.

“Countries like the United States, the United Kingdom and Malaysia have successfully done this in the past (segregating prisoners) by separating juvenile delinquents, the criminally insane, death row prisoners and those with communicable diseases, such as Human Immunodeficiency Virus.”

This article first appeared on NST.