Herat Prison Offers Refuge for Abused Women

Desperate to avoid an arranged marriage, Feroza tried every escape route she could find. When told her father that her husband-to-be was a reputed drug addict, he wasn’t interested. Then she contacted the government department for women’s affairs in the western Afghan city of Herat, but they too would not listen. 

Eventually she left home. Her father responded by getting her jailed, under Afghan laws that count running away from home as a punishable “moral crime”.

After she was let out, she sought refuge at a women’s shelter, but when she moved back to stay with relatives, they promptly got her imprisoned again.

Now the 23-year-old is finding that life in the women’s wing of Herat prison is better than the alternatives on the outside.

“I can watch television and talk and laugh with my friends. The food is good and there’s no psychological or physical pressure. Why shouldn’t I be happy here?” she said. “Jail is much better than living with a person whom you don’t love.”

The women’s section of Herat prison has around 140 inmates, most of them there for “moral crimes” or acting as mules for drug traffickers.

In Afghanistan, the loosely-defined term “moral crime” is often applied to women who run away from home or refuse to get married. These are not offences in the written criminal code, but it is common for courts to impose jail sentences of up to a year on women deemed guilty of them. (See Afghan Runaways Flee Forced Marriages for more on this issue.)

In a country where prison conditions are often poor, the Herat facility has made an effort to improve standards. Prison governor Abdul Majid Sadiqi said female detainees had access to television and radio, and there was talk of introducing a computer suite, a sports field and a kindergarten for children living with their mothers.

One major advance has been a programme to teach both male and female inmates skills that will help them survive when they are released. The women study embroidery, tailoring, carpet weaving, and shoemaking, and get a cut from sales of the goods they make. (See Herat Convicts Retrained for Life Outside.)

The women’s group Neda-ye Zan lobbied hard for the improvements at the prison, and also runs safe houses to help women when they are released but not ready to return to their families.

“It is a source of pride for us and all the other institutions that work with women in Herat,” the organisation’s head Soraya Pakzad said. “We have succeeded in protecting women’s rights. We will never allow these facilities at the prison to be removed.”

That is exactly what critics of the prison regime want to happen. Herat’s chief prosecutor Maria Bashir – the only women to hold such a role in Afghanistan –warns that being too soft on prisoners will only encourage them to reoffend, and would like to see harsher conditions for recidivists, in particular.

Abdul Rauf Mokhles, a lecturer in Sharia law in Herat, agreed that provision for the inmates was “excessive”, and that imprisonment should have a deterrent purpose.

“Prison officials are sending criminals a message that if they want these facilities, they need to commit a crime,” he said.

Similar sentiments were expressed by many Herat residents.

“Prison is a place for regret. It isn’t a place people should be interested in returning to,” shopkeeper Abdul Salam, 52, said.

Shokria Nemati, a 46-year-old female teacher, said people used to be afraid of the word “prison”, but that was no longer the case.

“Although I’m against the mistreatment of prisoners, I don’t agree with having facilities that will cause crime levels in society to rise,” she added.

Abdul Qader Rahimi, who heads the Herat branch of the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission, rejects the argument that humane treatment will lead to reoffending.

“I don’t think the facilities [at Herat jail] will make people consider reoffending,” he said. “It is when the prison environment is problematic that prisoners will return to society as angry and stunted individuals.”

Inside the prison, Golsum, a 44-year-old convicted of smuggling heroin, said she could not wait to be released, whatever conditions were like inside.

“Even if a prison is like heaven, it is still prison,” she said.

Sahar Azimi is an IWPR-trained reporter in Herat.