Seven more PLKN camps to be used as satellite prisons, detention centres

KUALA LUMPUR: The Prisons Department of Malaysia will be turning seven more National Service Training Programme (PLKN) camps into satellite prison as well as detention centres and temporary quarantine for illegal immigrants to ease the congestion of prisoners and detainees.

Prisons Department director-general Datuk Nordin Muhamad said seven more PLKN camps would be utilised from June 1.

He said the department needed to modify the PLKN camps and tighten security to prevent prisoners from escaping.

"This is because the PLKN camps are not prisons as they are and we need to install closed-circuit television cameras, barbed wire and grille fences and fortified the windows of PLKN rooms with iron grille, " he told Bernama recently.

Earlier, five PLKN camps were converted as satellite prisons and temporary detention centres since January this year to place 2,150 prisoners.

"The Prisons Department is expected to use the satellite prison for two years to keep new prisoners for the purpose of screening them before being sent to prison," he said.

On the standard operating procedure (SOP) at satellite prison to contain the spread of COVID-19, Nordin said screening tests would be conducted to ascertain the status of prisoners before being isolated.

"Now, we will screen all new prisoners with or without symptoms to prevent the formation of a new prison cluster.

"So far, the number of positive cases involving prisoners is only 1.5 per cent of the entire COVID-19 cases in the country," he said.

Nordin said the department is forced to resort to these preventive measures as new prisoners come from various backgrounds.

Apart from that, he is also targeting to reduce congestion in prisons in 10 years if the prison law is amended for minor offenders.

"There is a possibility for a rehabilitation in the community programme, release on parole or release with licence which we could expand. Currently, we can overcome the congestion as we have alternative punishment," he said.

-- BERNAMA