Under The Tree

Many of you have asked – what is it like in a Ugandan prison and what exactly do you do there?

Just for background, Pepperdine faculty, students and volunteers have been working on justice projects in Uganda for almost 15 years. Much of that work has addressed prison overcrowding due to the length of time accused persons spend in custody waiting for their cases to be concluded – a period called “remand.”

Not everyone accused of a crime, even very serious ones, waits in prison on remand. If you have money for bail or property to put up as collateral for a court bond, you can be released. Or if you have political connections, a judge may let you out pending trial. So, most of the people on remand are the poor and the powerless.

Accused persons can be on remand for months, years and in some cases, a decade or more. We step in as counsel for these remandees and try to resolve their cases before remand times get out of hand. Right now, this is challenging, because since COVID, no remandees have been transported to Court anywhere in Uganda. Defendants charged with even the most minor offenses sit in prison. The police, of course, are continuing to work. If anything, they are arresting more people because there are curfew violations and increased petty theft during lockdown. Remand times have increased, the number of remandees has grown and resolving cases is challenging.

My team and I go to the prisons several times each week, often daily and sometimes even multiple facilities in one day. We primarily work out of a Court about 20 km from Kampala. But that Court covers cases for prisoners at 18 separate prisons. Some are 80 miles or more from that Court and 100+ miles from Kampala.

Sometimes we go just to introduce ourselves to clients and tell them about what we do. Sometimes we go to check in on clients we have been working with. Sometimes we go to find clients who have been transferred unexpectedly from one prison to another. Sometimes we go to review cases, discuss prosecution offers or sign paperwork. Often we go because the Officer in Charge (or “OC”) of the prison summons us because they have many remandees who have been in their facility for many months and they are running out of room.

Prisons in Uganda are not anything like those in the US. A recent study says that they are the 6th most crowded in the world. There are walls, guards and prisoners wear uniforms. But for the prisons we visit at least, there is little animosity between guards and inmates. In fact, guards often act as translators or even advocates for remandees, trying to convince us of the merits of a given case or trying to explain to the accused whether a proposed resolution is fair.

There is rarely violence or outbursts and remandees seem shockingly serene and unbothered in the face of endless delays. To be clear -- none of the remandees wants to remain in prison. They are enthusiastic to speak with us not only because we may be the first and only person there to hear their side of the story, but also because they know we can help them. But there is little obvious anxiety and no interrupting or cutting in front of other inmates.

While prisons in Uganda are peaceful, they are unpleasant. Dozens of remandees fill concrete single rooms to sleep head to foot and are locked in for hours at a time. No blankets, no mattresses, no pillows and one hole in the floor for nature calls. They have one set of clothes and usually no shoes. They generally have no personal effects of any kind, not even court paperwork. There are no visiting hours (because of COVID), no phone contact with the outside world and no mail.

Prisoners eat 1-2 times each day, usually a small bowl of starch (beans, cassava) cooked over an open wood fire in the prison “kitchen,” which is generally just a small brick outbuilding with a water pump. They spend much of their time doing menial work at the prison, usually farming.

Prisons are “co-ed” although the females and males are segregated. Women often have babies while on remand and the kids remain with them in prison. I was just in a prison called Kauga this morning and there were 2 moms nursing while my team talked to the prisoners.

Those accused of crimes wear yellow and mix with those already convicted, who wear orange. Every now and then you will also meet a debtor in prison trying to work off some obligation. Prisons can be smaller than 100 inmates and larger than 1000.

We often have court sessions in the prisons. The handful (3-4) guards on duty will pull some desks and chairs out into the prison yard, often under a tree. Defense counsel, court staff, the judge and the prosecutors will all convene within a few feet of a large group of seated and unshackled inmates to negotiate and resolve cases if we can. Cows and chickens (in the care of the remandees) often walk among us. The open wood fire of the prison kitchen inserts a smoky odor into the files and paperwork. There we handle pleas, take testimony and do our work.

One more question we often get – safety. Both of my daughters have visited a number of Ugandan prisons. I’ve never taken them to visit a US prison. My US colleagues could not imagine walking into any American jail or prison to mingle among dozens of unhandcuffed inmates even if they knew you were there to help.

But it is different here in Uganda. I’m sure there are many complex sociological and psychological reasons for the placidity of the prison yard – power imbalances, colonialism, illiteracy, hopelessness, unfettered authority and impunity of guards – but frankly, sitting in a prison yard among dozens of unhandcuffed remandees seems safer to me than driving through Kampala traffic.

The photos here give a glimpse of life in a Ugandan prison as well as one of the recent Court sessions at a facility called Ntenjeru about 90 km from Kampala. On that day in September, we resolved almost 30 cases involving assault, theft, burglary, livestock theft and a few low-level sex offenses where both suspects and victims were teenagers. Of those matters almost half of the remandees went free immediately after their case was concluded because they had served more than an appropriate amount of time. A couple of cases were even dismissed once we looked at the police files and discovered that the State’s case was weak.

For my lawyer friends in the US – consider this an open invitation to come to Uganda and experience this work. Pepperdine generally comes to Uganda twice each year (March 3 - 13 is the next trip) with a handful of US lawyers to work in various underserved prisons throughout the country. I promise that the accommodations will be sparse, the travel exhausting, the food starchy and unmemorable, the weather generally sweaty and the roads and traffic apocalyptically awful. But trust me when I say that you will never have a more satisfying, eye-opening experience as an advocate as you will here, joining with Ugandan lawyers, law students and judges to bring aid to “the least of these.”