‘Unconstitutional’ rules for awaiting trial prisoners reversed

Namibia’s highest court has delivered a judgment that could see a new era for awaiting trial prisoners in that country, writes Carmel Rickard in her A Matter of Justice column on the Legalbrief site. Most fundamentally, it has struck down, as unconstitutional, the definition of the word ‘offender’ which had previously included awaiting trial prisoners. The court said that to call people who hadn’t been convicted, ‘offenders’, struck at the heart of the constitutionally guaranteed presumption of innocence, as though they had already been found guilty. The court also held certain other practices in relation to awaiting trial prisoners were unconstitutional.

Namibia judgment

A Matter of Justice