Life on the farm at CC4
Fri, 2 October 2015 ppp
May Titthara and Alice Cuddy
Prisoners in Pursat province undertake manual labour outside of prison grounds earlier this month as a prison guard supervises the work. Heng Chivoan |
A
remote jail opened more than five years ago to lessen chronic
overcrowding in the prison system is also operating as a farming
business, where free labour is seemingly used to yield big profits for
senior staff.
When
Correctional Centre 4 (CC4) opened its gates in January 2010, it was
slated to become the largest prison in the country, with space for about
2,500 inmates. But most of the complex was never completed, while large
swathes of the grounds are allegedly used by a small number of
officials for personal gain.
The
Interior Ministry’s General Department of Prisons (GDP) touted CC4 as a
solution to the well-documented issue of overcrowding, which has left
inmates across the country – including those in pre-trial detention,
children and the mentally ill – in squalid conditions, without adequate
food or amenities.
But
more than five years on, the prison, which is situated on a sprawling
plot of land in rural Pursat province, is home to fewer than 250
inmates. Purported plans to build infrastructure to house thousands more
never materialised.
“Originally,
five ‘branches’ were planned for construction and each was proposed to
house 500 prisoners, but this has not happened. Only two ‘branches’ have
been constructed and the capacity of each is significantly less than
500,” said Nou Sam An, prison supervisor at local rights group Licadho.
The
failure to accommodate the intended numbers means “there has been no
appreciable difference in the prison overcrowding rates across the
country since CC4 accepted its first prisoners”, he said, adding that
the rate of overcrowding remained at more than 170 per cent.
Free labour
Unlike
most of the country’s prisons, when you approach CC4, you are greeted
not by walls and razor wire, but hundreds of acres of farmland.
In
March, rows of cassava plants stretched across the grounds. Inmates who
had worked the fields in the early morning and late afternoon had
retired indoors to wait for the harvest.
Numerous requests over the past year to gain official access to CC4 have been ignored or rejected.
Last
month, the cassava had been harvested and sold, but inmates were put
back to work, using sickles to trim grass and hedges on the dirt road
that leads up to the facility.
Prison guards, who were visibly intoxicated, sat nearby sipping beer and eating salted fish.
One
convict joined them, a beer in hand. “We work, but we are not paid,”
Sopheak* later said, as he rejoined the other prisoners on the work
detail.
Like most of the men at CC4, Sopheak is a low-security inmate, two months away from completing an eight-year prison sentence.
He
said that he had no idea how much total income the crops bring in. He
knows only that they are sold to local businesspeople who negotiate
rates with senior prison officials.
“We, the prisoners, just complete work and we don’t get anything for it.”
Another
inmate said he felt lucky to have been selected to work on the
plantations because it gave him the opportunity to leave his cell.
But, he added, he had not received payment of any kind for his work.
“I’m
really exhausted after the work, but . . . we are the prisoners, so we
have no rights to make demands, because we are afraid of abuse,” he
said.
During
the interview, a guard approached and, speaking over the inmate,
insisted the prisoners were paid for their labour. But when questioned
about the details, he had no answers.
“Only
the boss [the prison director] knows about the money, since he is the
one distributing the cash. The officials like me don’t know,” said the
guard, who declined to give his name.
He and the other prison staff threatened Post journalists with arrest before ordering reporters away from the facility.
A
former prisoner who spent three months at CC4 recalled this week the
daily shifts he was required to work on the farmland, for which he says
he was never paid.
“Besides growing cassava, we cleared the forest and built roads. We had nothing else to do there.”
Missing money
Yem
Pov, the former director of CC4 who was transferred this week to
Kampong Cham Provincial Prison, said profits each season from the
cassava amount to about $9,800.
A source with knowledge of the prison’s workings said profits for 2013 were about $14,000.
The
2011 Prison Law states that a prison is entitled to enter into private
contracts to “generate employment for the prison industry, handicraft
and farming programs, and is entitled to enter into a contract to sell
the products”.
The
law says that a sub-decree governing “the use of income generated by
the prison industry” would be introduced, but no regulation seems to
have been passed.
Meanwhile,
Cambodia’s Prison Procedures stipulate that prisoners may receive up to
25 per cent of profits gained from their work. They should receive
between 1,000 and 2,000 riel ($0.25 to $0.50) for each day worked, which
can be paid upon their release.
Pov
this week insisted that the profits from the business were divided
evenly, with half split among prisoners and prison staff, a quarter
going to senior prison officials, and a quarter held by the prison
itself. “The prisoners who don’t do the task will not receive any money;
the ones who do will,” he said.
But
none of the current or former inmates interviewed for this story had
received any financial payment or other benefits, such as reduced
sentences, for their efforts.
“All the money is utilised by the prison director for himself and his officials,” Sopheak alleged.
Prison
guards told the Post that they received some money for their part in
the program, but did not detail how much. They, too, said Pov, handled
the cash.
Sam
An of Licadho yesterday said the use of the program to generate profits
for officials undermined any “legitimate rehabilitation function”.
“The
coercive and exploitative conditions in CC4’s farm labour program
violate prisoners’ fundamental rights,” he said, “and these conditions
must be improved for the program to have any chance of genuinely
contributing to the rehabilitation and reintegration of prisoners.”
*Names of current inmates have been changed to protect their identity.
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