Sédhiou : ''La criminalisation des infractions comme l'homosexualité contribue à la surpopulation carcérale et à la… », (Sankoung Sané)
“In the debate on the criminalization of homosexuality, it is necessary to understand what is at stake. The Senegalese justice system suffers particularly from its overcrowded prisons and investigating magistrates' offices. Faced with this reality, which civil society and human rights organizations have long deplored, the authorities have implemented reforms to the penal code and the code of criminal procedure, introducing electronic tagging, community service, suspended sentences, probation, semi-liberty, and, essentially, the splitting of sentences.”
Despite this, it is clear that these measures are insufficient because prisons and investigating magistrates' offices remain overcrowded. Our view has always been that the criminalization of drug offenses, cattle theft, and now, as some Senegalese advocate, homosexuality, contributes to perpetuating the problem of prison overcrowding and the overloaded workload of investigating magistrates.
The government's option of increasing penalties for homosexuality aligns with addressing these ills within our justice system. Indeed, while criminalizing homosexuality eliminates the possibility of immediate trial—whereas offenses like cattle theft, drug trafficking, and acts against nature are generally flagrant, allowing for swift prosecution—it unnecessarily complicates procedures, prolongs trial delays, and increases the number of pretrial detentions. In this respect, increasing penalties instead of criminalizing homosexuality is the better solution because, obviously, a 10-year prison sentence, a misdemeanor penalty, is more severe than 2 or 5 years of hard labor or imprisonment, which are felony sentences.
That said, if the government was able to so quickly draft a text amending the criminal law on homosexuality, it could have carried out its general reform with the recommendations issued following the conference on justice, in particular, the introduction of the judge of freedoms to (finally) remove from the public prosecutors this constantly criticized power of almost systematic pre-trial detention and of opposing a decision of release by the investigating judge.
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