Senegalese justice has for the first time placed two defendants under electronic bracelets instead of sending them to prison, thus inaugurating the system put in place to unclog places of detention, we learned Thursday, January 12 from the Ministry of justice.
Two defendants were placed under electronic bracelet Wednesday by the court of Pikine-Guédiawaye (suburb of Dakar), told AFP an official at the Ministry of Justice and another from the center responsible for monitoring people subjected to this device, confirming information from local media. The ministry and the center did not give further details.
The two people wearing electronic bracelets are charged with “criminal association, attempted fraud and use of forgery in an administrative document”the daily reported Thursday The Observer. They will wear the bracelet until the investigation continues in this case.
A first in West Africa
Senegal inaugurated in mid-November in Dakar the center responsible for monitoring people wearing electronic bracelets, a first in West Africa. The country has been talking since 2018 regarding the introduction of the electronic bracelet as an alternative to prison. It was approved in July 2020 by the deputies. Persons convicted of rape, pedocrime and drug trafficking are excluded from the scope.
The use of this technology has aroused reluctance among justice professionals and rights defenders. The reservations relate to the capacity of the legal system of this less developed country to apply the measure, to the unequal access to the means of communication enabling it to be implemented or to the fairness between litigants who would or would not benefit from it.
Advocates further say that the bracelet should not become the solution to the substantive problem of disproportionate use of the warrant of committal. Human rights defenders regularly denounce the conditions of detention and overcrowding in Senegalese prisons, the almost systematic use of placement under a warrant of committal and the length of pre-trial detention.
