The Burkinabe government adopted on Thursday a bill to relieve prison overcrowding by replacing certain custodial sentences with community service.

“Our prisons are now full of people convicted for X reasons; this prison overcrowding can be used for other purposes (…). The community service sentence effectively aims to resolve this problem because it will be imposed as a replacement for systematic imprisonment,” said the Minister of Justice, Edasso Rodrigue Bayala, on Thursday at the end of the Council of Ministers.

For a certain number of offences, the sentence of community service will be systematically and automatically pronounced by the judge, the minister specified.

President Ibrahim Traoré had repeatedly reaffirmed his desire to reform the prison system to employ certain prisoners in production sectors such as agriculture and infrastructure.

Source: Burkina Information Agency