Swazi to continue jailing kids

Published Jan 24, 2013

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Mbabane - The Swazi penal system’s unusual programme of allowing children as young as 11 to be imprisoned without legal sentencing so that their parents can teach them “a lesson” will continue.

This is despite a high court ruling this week releasing from incarceration a young woman, now 21, who was imprisoned at her mother’s behest because she fell pregnant out of wedlock.

Vuyesihle Magagula was kept at the Mawelawela Correctional Facility. However, children sent to prison by their parents are supposed to reside at Juvenile Industrial School at Mdutshane Correctional Facility.

“Noticing the strife that parents go through when raising some of their children who are unruly, we decided to open our doors to assist them,” Swaziland’s commissioner for correctional services, Isaiah Ntshangase, said last month.

He invited parents to send their children to Mdutshane. - Independent Foreign Service

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