ACJR Publications

Presentation by Jean Redpath

Presentation by Lukas Muntingh

Apresentação de Gwen Dereymaeker

Apresentação de Kristen Petersen

Apresentação de Jean Redpath

Apresentação de Lukas Muntingh

O projeto procurou compreender e quantificar a forma como a decisão de deter um arguido afecta os direitos socioeconómicos, isto é, os recursos dos indivíduos, inclusive aqueles além das pessoas em prisão.

Twenty years into democracy, the independence of the NPA, in particular the National Director of Public Prosecutions (NDPP), has become a highly contested and politicised issue. The Constitutional Court has noted that ‘[t]he constitutional obligation upon the State to prosecute those offences which threaten or infringe the rights of citizens is of central importance in our constitutional framework’. This report focuses on the substantive problems and dilemmas facing the NPA. In the discussion that follows the major challenges that the NPA is facing and have faced are set out. The report unpacks these and presents possible solutions and recommendations.

The Socio-economic Impact of Pre-trial detention in Kenya, Mozambique and Zambia

In many countries people accused of crimes are held in detention before trial. The law permits this detention usually in order to guarantee the appearance of the accused at trial. This project seeks to confirm and quantify the socio-economic impact of such pre-trial detention on detainees, their families, and associated households, in the main urban centres of Kenya, Mozambique and Zambia.

An Audit of the Criminal Justice System in Kenya

The 2010 Constitution ushered in a new era for governance in Kenya, with notable emphasis on rights codified in the Bill of Rights under Chapter Four of the Constitution. It is against this background that, under the auspices of the National Council on Administration of Justice (NCAJ), the Legal Resources Foundation Trust (LRF) and Resources Oriented Development Initiatives (RODI-Kenya) - with technical support from University of Western Cape South Africa - CSPRI and financial support from Open Society Foundations - partnered to conduct an audit study on Kenya’s Criminal Justice System. The focus was on pretrial detention with specific emphasis on conditions of detention and case-flow management. The audit was commissioned by the NCAJ Council on the 15th May, 2015 and thereafter conducted under the supervision of an NCAJ National Steering Committee, comprising of members drawn from the various agencies of the Criminal Justice System.

Ten years have lapsed since the Jali Commission’s final report became publicly available, and it is therefore an opportune time to assess the state of South Africa’s prison system. The Jali Commission was appointed when it became clear that the state had lost control of the Department of Correctional Services (DCS). A decade on, some notable advances have been made in regaining control, and addressing corruption and maladministration. However, serious and persistent challenges remain. These are explored in this article, with a particular focus on policy development, the performance of the DCS against set targets, governance and human rights violations. In all four of these areas substantial shortcomings remain. Impunity for human rights violations is perhaps the most critical challenge, as the DCS has been reluctant to acknowledge the scale of this problem or to seriously address it.

The deprivation of liberty is a serious intervention in any person’s life, and therefore the possibility of releasing an accused person from custody pending trial is a fundamental part of criminal justice systems across the world. Criminal justice systems have developed various ways to ensure, at least in law, that accused persons appear for trial without depriving them of their liberty. Such release may be conditional or unconditional. Unconditional release usually takes the form of a warning to appear in court at a later date, while conditional release can be secured through bail, bond, surety, and supervision. This paper reviews the laws on conditional release in Burundi, Malawi and Mozambique. These three countries were selected on the basis that they represent not only different types of legal systems but Francophone, Anglophone and Lusophone legal traditions, respectively. --

A la suite de l'adoption de conventions internationales des droits de l'homme dans la deuxième moitié du dernier siècle et de nouvelles constitutions à la fin du 20e siècle, la question se pose de savoir si les droits reconnus dans ces conventions et constitutions sont reconnus dans la législation applicable. Dès lors, ce rapport examine la question de la constitutionnalité du droit pénal et du droit de la procédure pénale en Côte d'Ivoire. Une étude comparative des cadres normatifs au Burundi, Côte d’Ivoire, Kenya, Mozambique et Zambie est également disponible en anglais.

Zambia’s Constitution contains an enforceable Bill of Rights, one which mainly lists civil and political rights that constrain state power. Having human rights enshrined in an enforceable manner in the Constitution is important, because the validity of other laws is measured by their conformity to the Constitution.

Kenya’s 2010 Constitution is liberal with regard to the rights of persons in the country’s criminal justice system. Its notable novel provisions include the entrenchment of the rights to fair trial and habeas corpus and the separation of criminal investigations and prosecutions under two independent systems. The country’s penal and criminal procedure laws predate the Constitution.