By CATHERINE NYIRENDA –

THE Zambia Law Development Commission (ZLDC) is developing a draft Bill that will see more convicts subjected to community service rather than incarceration to assist reduce torture in prisons arising from inhuman conditions.
ZLDC deputy director Joyce Macmillan said the Commission had cited poor prison conditions in the country as a cause of torture following overcrowding.
“We have realised that offences that most people have been imprisoned for were petty issues arising from poverty and are not necessarily supposed to be incarcerated on,” Ms Macmillan said.
Ms Macmillan said this in Lusaka yesterday when she appeared before the Parliamentary Committee on Legal Affairs, Governance, Human rights, Gender Matters and Child Affairs to explain the causes and extent of torture in Zambia.
She was responding to Committee chairperson and Monze Central Member of Parliament (MP) Jack Mwiimbu who questioned if there were any recommendations that the Commission could offer as alternative modes of punishments for offenders rather than incarceration which subjects them to inhuman and torturous conditions.
The Commission had concluded the review process for the draft Bill for community sentence and the whole process would be completed in the first quarter this year.
The Commission would later submit the draft to parliament for enactment by the end of this year.
She also told Committee that the Commission was reviewing the penal code, whose process would also be completed by the end of this year.
MMD Mwandi MP Michael Kaingu asked Ms Macmillan whether the revision of the penal code was not late considering that the draft Constitution was in its final stage.
In her response Ms Macmillan said the Constitution review process would not affect the review of the penal code as it was a subsidiary law.
Earlier, Ms Macmillan submitted to the Committee that the absence of legislation defining and criminalising torture was one of the causes of the vice, as well as derivative evidence admissible in the courts of law by the perpetuates.
She cited interrogation by Police as the other cause of torture, which range from physical forms such as beating to psychological forms such as simulated execution, solitary confinement and holding of persons incommunicado among others.
She said the Commission also recommended that the Police Public Complaints Authority (PPCA) should be strengthened to investigate and take criminal or disciplinary actions against police officers implicated with torture.
The Commission recommended that among other measures of dealing with torture was to give powers to the Human Rights Commission (HRC) to enable it deal effectively with the problem.