There are at most 9 000 prisoners in Cameroon - Laurent Esso

The Minister of Justice, in a meeting with the presidents of the Court of Appeal and regional delegates of prison administrations, stated the number of prisoners in Cameroon were up to 90, 000.

The meeting took place in Yaoundé on September 17, 2015.

Justice Minister Laurent Esso said that one of the main causes of the crisis of prison overpopulation across the country is the inequality between the number of prisons, the number of courts and the number of registered criminal cases.

Each year, 50 000 criminal cases are recruited by a thousand of magistrates in 99 jurisdictions but convicts have 78 prisons to accommodate them. “It should clearly be pointed out that there is a large discrepancy between the number of judges, the number of courts, the number of criminal cases and the number of open prisons,” the Minister said.

"This strong disproportion is an issue that affects judicial processes and causes overcrowding which we seek to deplore. This is aside the fact that there is an absolute number of 17 000 places for 26,000 prisoners who are behind bars in 2015.

Magistrates are however not solely responsible for this structural crisis. The second case diagnosed by Laurent Esso is relative "to behaviours of the different actors" who do not always see the need to expedite the processing of criminal proceedings.

The note is worth more for cases of preventive detention. But the Minister of Justice stopped there as concerns recommendations, and recalls that the need for the reduction of the population in the detention centres should not lead the judges not to punish people who are guilty.

“The law does not provide that imprisonment should be imposed provided that there are places available in prisons,” noted Laurent Esso with a touch of irony.

He also seemed to have chosen not to give precise guidance to participants. On the contrary, he called on the president of the Special Criminal Court, Prosecutor of the Court, heads of Courts of Appeal and regional delegates of the prison to share their experiences in order to improve understanding of the origins of the phenomenon of prison overcrowding in Cameroon and to provide solutions.