Reduce prison population as a mitigation strategy

SUARA Rakyat Malaysia (Suaram) welcomes the Prisons Department of Malaysia’s initiatives to reduce congestion in prisons to mitigate the spread of Covid-19 among prisoners (The Star, Oct 7; online at bit.ly/star_prisons) and call for further steps and actions to be developed to minimise and prevent further outbreaks of the disease in its facilities.

In the first outbreak in March, Suaram and other civil society organisations called on the government to reduce the number of prisoners in detention facilities to mitigate the risk of Covid-19 transmission in overcrowded conditions.