The Moroccan Prisons Administration has expressed “great concern” about overcrowding in prisons, which hold 100,000 inmates out of a capacity of 64,000, a record figure that is reinvigorating the debate on pre-trial detention.
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“The total number of prison residents reached 100,004 prisoners on August 7, a record number considering that the capacity of these institutions currently does not exceed 64,600 beds,” said the General Delegation for Prison Administration and Reintegration (DGAPR).
Morocco has just over 37 million inhabitants.
“Although the DGAPR expresses its great concern about this glaring increase, it calls on the judicial and administrative authorities to find solutions as soon as possible to solve the problem of (prison) overcrowding,” reads a beginning statement released this week.
Since then, controversy has grown, especially as this unprecedented high “is likely to rise further if the current incarceration rate continues,” warns the DGAPR.
The prison administration and human rights organizations regularly warn of overcrowding in Moroccan prisons and call for restrictions on the use of preventive detention.
The accused accounted for 39% of the total number of those detained, prosecutors said in a statement on Wednesday.
The prosecution therefore shares the DGAPR’s “concern” about prison overcrowding and ensures that it is working on a “rationalization of preventive detention”, but notes that crime (given the seriousness of the crimes committed, repetitions, etc. ) in recent years.
For its part, the Club des Magistrates du Maroc, a major professional association, in a statement criticized “the government’s criminal policy, which is based on imprisonment” instead of “taking social, economic, cultural and educational measures aimed at combating the causes of crime”. “. .
In early June, the government passed a bill on alternative sentences to “alleviate prison overcrowding”.
This text, which has not yet been discussed in Parliament, provides for penalties such as charitable work or electronic surveillance.