Sentencing

The law in Zimbabwe has allowed a court to impose a sentence of “moderate corporal punishment” on any boy under 18 convicted of any offence. This has been justified as a way of keeping young people out of prison, among other reasons. But now the country’s constitutional court says that this section of the law runs foul of developing human dignity jurisprudence. Corporal punishment, as a court imposed sentence, has to go – it cannot be retained in a society that wants to ensure no-one is subjected to degrading treatment or punishment.

Two new decisions from the High Court in Namibia show judges on the warpath against drugs and drug dealing. The distinctly tougher line follows a watershed judgment late last year (2018). As I wrote at the time, through that strongly-worded landmark decision the Namibian courts gave notice that they were intent on a serious change to the way they handle cases involving drugs and drug dealing.

In the midst of bad stories about the quality of justice being experienced in Zimbabwe’s courts comes a high court judgment that sees the accused as an individual – and that sets aside his trial sentence in the lower court as a shocking expression of the magistrate’s whims about burglars at Christmas.