AGE OF CRIMINAL RESPONSIBILITY
The Burundi Penal Code (2009) specifies that minors under 15 years of age are criminally irresponsible - i.e. from the age of 15, a person can be held criminally responsible. I'm referring here to articles 28 and 29 of the Burundi penal code :
• Article 28: Minors under the age of fifteen are criminally irresponsible. Offences committed by them give rise only to civil reparation.
• Article 29: When the perpetrator or accomplice of an offence is a minor of at least fifteen years of age and less than eighteen years of age at the time of the offence, the penalties are pronounced as follows:
1. If he/she would have incurred the penalty of penal servitude for life, he/she shall be sentenced to a term of five to ten years of principal penal servitude;
2. If he/she has incurred a time sentence or a fine, the sentences that may be pronounced against him/her may not exceed four years.
https://bit.ly/4icpENm (page 11)
https://bit.ly/4blSPvj (page 7)
RECIDIVISM
The Penal Code (2009) refers to the effect of recidivism (by increasing the sentence in some cases)
Chapter III: Recidivism
Article 115: Whoever, having been sentenced, by a final decision, for an offence to a penalty greater than or equal to one year of penal servitude, has committed, within five years after the expiry of this sentence or its prescription, an offence which must be punished by penal servitude for more than two months, is sentenced to double the penalty imposed by law.
Article 116: If the first sentence was life imprisonment and the second offence is punishable by the same punishable by the same sentence, the convicted person may only apply for conditional release after a period of thirty years.
Article 117: There is no recidivism when the sentence for the first offence has been erased by amnesty or if the convicted person has been irrevocably rehabilitated.
Article 118: A person who has been convicted by a military court is, in the case of a subsequent offence, liable only if the first conviction was for an offence punishable under ordinary law.
INCARCERATION
ACAT-Burundi's reports and the articles consulted insist on dramatic prison overcrowding. For example, ACAT-Burundi's Annual Report 2023 states that on December 31, 2023, the number of inmates stood at 13,693, testifying to a system that is grossly undersized in relation to the actual number of incarcerations. Below is a table with rates of incarceration as provided by Prison Insider and World Prison Brief.
Women as a percentage of all prisoners | Children as a percentage of all prisoners | Percentage of people awsaiting trial | People sentenced to death | Homicide rate (per 100,000 inhabitants) |
7.5 % (1,038) | 1.4 % | 51.2 % (7,114) | The death penalty has been abolished since 2009 | 5.28 |
Incarceration rate (per 100,000 inhabitants) | Total number of incarcerated people
| Prison density
|
105 | 13,898 | 323.7 % |
DETENTION CENTRE NAMES AND CAPACITIES
Table drawn up by Iwacu based on data from the report by members of the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights, presented to the National Assembly on June 5, 2024.
Detention Centre | Capacity | Current Inmate Number (June 2024) |
BURURI | 250 | 477 |
RUMONGE | 800 | 1233 |
RUTANA | 350 | 556 |
GITEGA | 400 | 1640 |
MUYINGA | 100 | 890 |
BUBANZA | 200 | 473 |
MPIMBA | 800 | 5037 |
NGOZI (HOMMES) | 400 | 1771 |
A report on the field visits carried out by members of the National Assembly's Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights was presented to the plenary session on June 5, 2024. This document reveals major dysfunctions in Burundi's prison system. It highlights overcrowding, prolonged detentions without trial and dilapidated prison infrastructures.
The mission by the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights took place between January 22 and 24, 2024. The deputies found that several prisons were holding three to seven times more inmates than their initial capacity allowed.
The Mpimba prison, for example, was designed to accommodate 800 prisoners, but now houses 5,037; the Gitega prison, with a capacity of 400, currently holds 1,640. The situation is no different at Ngozi prison. Built for 400 inmates, it currently holds 1,771.
In addition to prison overcrowding, the report denounces a high number of prisoners held for long periods without ever appearing in court. Mpimba prison, for example, has 3,575 inmates awaiting trial, while Ngozi men's prison has 579. According to the MPs, these prolonged detentions without trial not only violate prisoners' rights but also further overloads an already saturated system.
Prisoners' poor living conditions are exacerbated by the deplorable state of the prison infrastructure. Most of the country's prisons date back to colonial times. Gitega prison, for example, was built in 1926, and Mpimba in 1948. The only post-independence prison is the Ngozi men's prison, built in 1986. These dilapidated buildings are no longer adapted to modern standards. This compromises prison conditions and the dignity of prisoners.
Faced with these considerable challenges, the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights has made a number of recommendations. It advocates granting provisional release to prisoners who have already served a quarter of their sentence, as well as to those who have committed minor offences.
The Commission also proposes that community service be preferred to imprisonment for certain offences. According to the report and a number of MEPs, these measures are needed to reduce prison overcrowding and create a more humane and efficient prison system.
Recent investigations and firsthand accounts have brought attention to the crises of overcrowding, poor infrastructure and the extended pre-trial detention faced by Burundi’s prison system. During early 2024 members of the National Assembly’s Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights inspected multiple prison facilities and discovered some were holding six times their intended inmate capacity. Mpimba Prison exceeded its capacity by holding over 5,000 inmates when it was constructed to accommodate only 800 while Gitega and Ngozi men’s prisons also faced severe overcrowding beyond their intended limits.
To reduce prison overcrowding and assist former inmates in returning to society, the President of Burundi has been granting pardons. For example, the government released more than 500 minor offence prisoners in February 2024 after applying selection standards to demonstrate their dedication to reducing prison overcrowding. Another example is that the President of the Republic, Evariste Ndayishimiye launched on Thursday, November 14, 2024, at Muramvya prison, the prison decongestion activity where 477 prisoners were released. A total of 5,442 prisoners were pardoned throughout the country, out of a total of 13,211 inmates . According to some experts, additional steps such as the expansion of non-detention options and prison facility improvements are vital for the maintenance of human rights standards and the protection of people’s dignity in detention.
Therefore, to get to know more about the age of criminal responsibility, recidivism rates, incarceration rates, incarceration numbers, detention centre names and capacities, and some tips on how one should navigate the jurisdiction in Burundi, kindly find below some of the information I have been able to collect from the public domain. Should you need more information in the jurisdiction of Burundi, please find a list of some links you can visit (Some of the pages in those links are in French and I hope that you will manage to translate them into English through your browser) on the last page of this document.
LINKS TO INSTITUTIONAL DOCUMENTS
NAME | LINK |
IWACU (Newspaper) | |
UNICEF DATA | |
NATIONAL GENERAL ASSEMBLY | |
PRISON INSIDER | |
IWACU (Newspaper) | |
WORLD PRISON BRIEF | |
A STUDENT’S THESIS AT THE UNIVERSITY OF BURUNDI | |
PRESIDENCY | |
ACAT-Burundi report (July, August and September 2024) | |
ACAT-Burundi report (January, February and March 2024) | |
ACAT-Burundi annual report (2023) | |
ACAT-Burundi’s annual report(2021) |
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