66 prisoners who were selected from all Zimbabwe prisons tasted freedom for the first time since their incarceration yesterday when they joined Connemara Open Prison in Kwekwe.
Connemara is an Open Prison which provides inmates with a privilege of a half way home treatment and for prisoners to qualify they have to go through a thorough interview.
The prison also provides one week off for prisoners to go to their homes every month until they finish their sentences, each inmate can source and cook his own food in his room and he also have a privilege to secure their own rooms with their own keys, free movement without escort and can leave prison in the morning and come back in the evening, they don’t put prison uniform they use their own, can entertain their visitors the whole day if they want and the prison has no any security feature to prevent an escape.
Addressing Journalists in Kwekwe yesterday, Chief Correctional Officer Gwauya Mutuke who is also the acting officer in charge of the Connemara Open Prison emphasized that his institution had flexible conditions for prisoners as they provide freedom which are different to closed prisons like Harare Central and Chikurubi Prisons as he reiterated that at Connemara prisoners were free to do various activities on their own without the interference of security officers.
“The security at this institution is very relaxed because the duty of the Officer in Charge and his team is to mainly supervise the inmates and not escort them neither do we use dogs riffles button sticks that are used at closed institutions except by night when we are guarding our premises.
“Again with security when inmates are here they receive Information freely without being censored by anybody, l’m talking in terms of what is the content it carries unlike with closed institutions who are same as the Herald newspaper which select valid information only but in open prison like this we have an open environment, we don’t search inmates here,” said Mr Mutuke.
Gwauya Mutuke also gave conditions that are required for prisoners to qualify to be at Connemara Open Prison.
“There are specific categories that qualifies the selection committee to do the selection in the past years where we have been particular about the types of crimes that qualifies one to be here of which most of them generally were crimes which were very petty and on 1A we have got shoplifting, theft and fraud, those minor cases and it tended to classify offenses according to our category and these for example unlike carjacking, armed robbery, murder, rape, stock theft, unlawful entry and those will not qualify to be on this institution but only this year for the first time we have today used a new criteria that tried to include other crimes so we deliberately did it,” he said.
Former police officer Bezel Kidima {43} who was sentenced 12 years in prison on account of robbery was fortunate to be part of the 66 selected inmates to join Connemara Open Prison and he admired the conditions insisting that they were flexible and favorable as compared to those which he experienced whilst on closed prisons.
“We are also free that we can communicate with our relatives on cellphone starting from 5 pm up to 8 pm this initiative was not offered at closed prisons, further to this we also have medical benefits whereby you can go to whatever hospital or clinic you want. We also wear our clothes which is different from closed prison,” said Kidima.
Connemara Open Prison is located between 30 kilometers from Kwekwe town and 32 Kilometers from Gweru.
The prison was established in 1996 when cabinet approved of an idea of having such kind of an institution in Zimbabwe and between that year up to 1999 the prison expanded and its doors first opened in 1 January 2000 when inmates were selected from four Zimbabwean prisons to fill up the institution.