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Wednesday, October 04, 2006

Malaysian prison

About one year ago, I wrote about how easy it was to enter the Malaysian prison...

'Klik untuk masuk' means click to enter. You only need to click to enter our prison
I revisited the Malaysian Prison website recently just to see if there have been changes to the website. As most of us would know, most of the time, govertment and corporate sites seldom get a facelift (or even updates). A pleasant surpise was in store for me when I checked them out...

You still only need one click to enter but at least the site looks nicer now
Wah... Nice design!! But wait... I know it is really nice to support our government efforts such as Visit Malaysia 2007. But seriously, I wonder who is the target audience when it comes to the prison websites? Would the audience be even interested in Visit Malaysia 2007? Hmmm... Where did they get the Visit Malaysia 2007 logo? I wanna have one on my site!

Anyway, on my last trip to this website, I did not actually bother to check out what was in this site. So this time around, I decided to poke around and be a busy body...

Some interesting facts and figures (based on 2004 statistics). Did you know...

• we have quite a number of prisons all over the country? And all this time, I've only heard of Pudu Jail.
  
• more than half of the convicted prisoners (remember that this is based on 2004 statistics) are foreigners? What?!? Let's think about this a bit. Assuming that each prisoner is given 5 meals a day (human rights thingy, perhaps?) - breakfast, lunch, tea, dinner and supper. And assuming the 2 main meals will cost rm3 (they can't be eating better than our policemen, right? Click here to read about the underpaid policemen) and the rest will cost rm2 per meal. That adds up to rm12 per day per prisoner. Or rm4380 per year (at the moment USD1 = rm3.7). In 2004, there were more than 30000 convicted foreign prisoners, meaning we spent about rm144million just for their food alone! We have NOT even taken into account medication, water and electricity usage, etc...
  
• there are 59 death row prisoners.
  
• 26 convicted prisoners earn rm3000 and above per month (wah, they earn more than our policemen?!?). Of this figure, 6 are convicted foreign prisoners. No wonder we have so many foreign workers coming to Malaysia and then commit crimes. They can earn better and decent money in the prison!
  
• the prisoners make some really nice products like tables, CD racks, etc...

This reminds me of an interesting news article I read in the papers just last week. The prison authorities will be launching an in-house brand for goods designed and produced by the prisoners. I think that is a good idea. Really! Maybe our next national campaign will sound like this "Beli barangan buatan penjara Malaysia".

Also featured recently in the papers was the case of a deathrow inmate who is still waiting for his 'day'. The inmate is taking court action to set aside his death sentence, imposed for drug trafficking and substitute it with life imprisonment instead. The prisoner claims that the delay in executing his execution (pun intended) is unconstitutional.

Huh? Just when you thought people try to avoid being executed, this one wants to be executed. But I guess we can understand the mental torture he is going through.

From what I have read, death row inmates will only be informed of their execution day on the night before. I guess going through your life daily and not knowing when you will be executed can be a real torture.

Labels: thoughts

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