394 – Command Responsibility: Building Cases of Policy from Patterns of Individual Events in International Human Rights Cases and Domestic Class Action Suits
Justice by the Numbers: Rwandan Prison Survey
Mary Gray
American University
Two years after the genocide that killed 800,000 Rwandans, primarily Tutsis, there were 80,00-90,000 imprisoned in a country of a few million and the prison population continued to grow by as many as 10,000 per month, the only release being death. In spite of international horror over the brutal loss of life, international notions of justice demanded due process and some semblance of a fair and speedy trial for the accused. The post-genocide Rwandan government rightly claimed that the fragile judicial system, deprived of most of its personnel and much of its infrastructure, could not handle the prospective case load. Donor governments who had already constructed several large new prisons asserted that, however horrible the crimes, it was not acceptable to put them in prison and throw away the key. Why not, proposed representatives of the US and other nations, with the agreement of the Rwandan government, begin by selecting a sample of prisoners to bring to trial? This describes how this was done and what resulted from it.
