'Prison labor can be judiciously employed'

The numbers of inmates in the Douala New Bell Central Prison are 3156 in number, according to information on August 31, 2015.

This figure was given yesterday to CT by the Director of the Penitentiary, Dieudonne Engonga Mintsang, who recalled the measures taken lately to fight against overpopulation of inmate in this prison, originally designed to accommodate about 800 people.

First, this capacity has been increased to 960. Indeed, explains the Manager, after the fire in September 2012 at cells 18 and 20, the State "granted an investment credit" in the 2013fiscal, which helped in constructing a building with four cells, with 160 additional places.

Besides that, the prison authorities of the Littoral based many hopes on the new prisons created by a text on July 2015. It involves the central prison in Douala-Ngoma (3rd District of Douala) and the main prison of Bonaberi. The first was planned on "about 51 hectares", said the Manager, who added: “It is therefore really a domain.”

Until these prisons are built in order to relieve the pressure on the New Bell prison, the prison administration has harnessed the transfer scheduled of accused persons definitively sentenced to prisons satellites in the region (Mbanga, Nkongsamba, Yabassi).

In addition to these establishments, noted the Manager, “prison labor can be wisely used in view of a preparation for reintegration.”

In such transactions by transfer of detainees, at the New Bell prison there is progress in the acceleration of the proceedings "for two to three years", which allows them to inform the defendants about their fate more quickly than in the past.