Pre-trial detentions are at the heart of Moroccan prisons’ overcrowding problem, according to experts

The Center for Studies on Human Rights and Democracy issued an extensive report on the situation of Moroccan prison, in partnership with the General Delegation for Prison Administration and Reintegration and the Geneva Center for Security Sector Governance.

An open panel was held this Wednesday in Rabat, to expose the report’s findings, chaired by Mohammed Salah Tamek, General Delegate to the National Penitentiary Administration (DGAPR), Cecile Lagoutte from the Center of Governance of the Security Field (DCAF), Habib Belkoukh, from the Center for Human Rights and Democracy (CEDHD), AND Driss Belmahi, a penitentiary expert and member of the rapport’s team.

As previously mentioned by Minister of Justice Abdelatif Ouahbi, one of the biggest challenges facing Moroccan prisons at the moment has been “the high rate of pretrial detentions in the country,” according to the report.

The General Administration of Prisons and Reintegration indicates that the proportion of pre-trial detainees amounted to 39% for the year 2019 and 45.27% for the year 2020, making up the approximate majority of Moroccan detainees.

For a country that is facing an overcrowding problem in most of its penitentiary facilities, the experts are highlighting the alternatives available to pre-trial detention, which the report says “are mostly ignored.”

According to the same report, an average of 40% of individuals pursued across courts in the country have been put in pre-trial detention between 2015 and 2019, a measure that was meant to “constitute an exception” in the judicial process.

Pre-trial detention has now “become a general rule in Morocco,” according to the General Delegation for Prison Administration and Reintegration, in addition to the puzzling fact that most of the detainees are mostly only facing misdemeanor charges that can easily be processed through fines and suspended prison sentences.

The report additionally highlights that a “long, slow judicial process is making matters worse, as pre-trial detention is not meant to last as long as it does in the country,” which is a result of the “delays in the investigation, uncoordinated cooperation between the various judicial actors, slow procedures and frequent postponement of sentences due to the overcrowding of courts.”

The COVID-19 pandemic has too, “contributed to a slow system,” considering that courts have remained closed for months during the early days of the virus outbreak.

The experts have pointed to the obvious bottlenecks facing the Moroccan penitentiary, agreeing that “the central problem in Morocco does not lie in extending the duration of sanctions, as much as in the predominance of the judicial resorting to short-term sanctions.”

For example, 66% of detainees for 2019 were mainly serving sentences of less than two years, which “could have been rendered shorter, in addition to the implementation of fines.”

Tamek, delegate to the DGAPR additionally noted that “short sentences constitute a real obstacle to the implementation of reintegration programs for the prisoners concerned with these provisions.”

The head of the Moroccan penitentiary system said that “during their short detention, prisoners are only concerned with the fate of their sentences and not focused on the opportunities available in terms of reintegration programs, especially since engaging in these programs is legally bound to the will guests.”

Therefore, the report calls for immediate, efficient, and wholesome action “to decriminalize some infractions by rendering them into administrative or civil penalties” without a criminal record listing, and without the possibility of imprisonment.