Uganda’s prison system faces two main issues: congestion and extensive pre-trial detainment. It is built for 20,000 inmates but houses close to 66,000. This is partly because half of those in prison are held on remand and have not yet been to court despite having spent months or years in detention.

Legatum’s initiative seeks to help Uganda to address both these issues by keeping out of prison people who should not be there and by providing inmates with legal aid, and with the skills and training to help them stay out once released. The programme also aims to promote local conflict resolution. As well as decongesting prisons, this too helps to reduce re-offending.

Several of us from Legatum recently travelled to Uganda to see how this model is being developed and tested. We learnt from the Principal Judge at the High Court in Kampala about the prison reforms he is leading, and about the judiciary’s support for this initiative. It would not be possible for the programme to exist without support from the Ugandan central government (and such support was a major factor in the decision to test it in Uganda).

The programme provides pro bono legal aid to those on remand, which includes plea-bargaining sessions in some Ugandan prisons. This gives inmates the opportunity to plead guilty in exchange for a lesser, but certain, sentence. Though common elsewhere, e.g. the U.S, this is a relatively recent innovation in Uganda. Until recently, every case had to be resolved through trial; and courts are so understaffed that inmates – whether innocent or guilty – often have to wait months or years before trial. This developing plea-bargaining system is helping to ensure that cases are at least being heard and time spent in the uncertainty of remand is reduced.

The Legatum team had the opportunity to help our partners, Foundation for Human Rights Initiative (FHRI), with plea-bargaining sessions and saw first-hand the depth of the problems it is intended to alleviate. Though not a panacea, and still developing, it is contributing to prison decongestion and is giving inmates long-awaited certainty.

We also saw how skills training has been introduced at the Bushenyi adult prison in Western Uganda by our partners, APROCEL. The skills taught there range from carpentry and sandal making to cooking and hairdressing. We were particularly impressed by the quality of the furniture produced in the carpentry workshop. The programme’s emphasis on reducing re-offending is reflected in the tools given to the inmates upon release to enable them to start businesses based on the skill learnt in prison.

Some of Legatum’s partner organisations focus on women in particular given the local cultural factors that place them at an even higher risk than men of unjust imprisonment. Women in Uganda are unlikely to contradict men or argue their cases, even if wrongfully accused. The existence of several dozen local languages adds a further layer of complication. Many women do not understand or know of what they are accused and are incapable of explaining themselves or correcting the record. One of Legatum’s partner organisations, Women’s Pro-Bono Initiative, provided much-needed assistance to hundreds of wrongfully accused women last year alone.

Legatum’s approach to philanthropy is to trial different initiatives in order to find out which ones may be able to create significant impact at a systemic level. We then scale successful models in collaboration with other philanthropists. While the contextual challenges in Uganda are clear, the progress of the Advancing Justice Programme shows that it is possible to make rapid progress when there is a focus on results. This bodes well for future expansion of the programme’s work to other countries in Africa and more widely.