KARACHI, Aug 24: Recommending to the government to notify drug addicts as sick persons, excluding them from the purview of criminal code and releasing them on parole, Sindh jail authorities have revealed that a large number of drug addicts are confined in various prisons of the province, causing over-crowding and drug smuggling.

Over 2,000 drug addicts are confined in different Sindh jails, of whom over 700 are in Malir district jail alone, an official report submitted to the Sindh government by the Inspectorate of Prisons says.

As a short-term measure, the report suggests, the government should consider releasing all the drug addicts, on parole.

The jailed addicts are either under remand under the Hudood Ordinance, 1979, or are the convicts serving various terms. Arresting the addicts and sending them to jails is common and according to statistics, the release ratio is far less than that of their admission, the report says.

The report, terming the drug addiction a medical problem rather than a criminal offence, stated that their classification as criminals and practice of seeking judicial remand, trial and conviction etc are against international charters.

Stating that confinement of drug addicts in the prisons creates numerous problems for the administration, the report says that the addicts, when sent to the courts for hearings, try their best, in connivance with police officials, to procure drugs and smuggle the same into the prison, using different techniques. Besides being a source of smuggling, the practice also corrupts the prison staff, the report says.

It maintains that these inmates, not only burden the limited medical facilities in the prisons, but in spite of being provided with necessary therapy, some of them do not survive, which is often described as ‘mysterious death’ or ‘extra-judicial killing’ by the media, for which the jail administration is blamed.

The report has recommended to the provincial government to set up separate detention and rehabilitation centres for the addicts, under social welfare department or NGOs and frame special laws for them, adding that physicians and specialists, alongwith required medicines, should be made available at these centres.—PPI