Justice Chan Reec Madut, chief justice of the South Sudan Supreme Court, in his office in Juba - courtesy

Police have called on the judiciary to speed up trials of more than 1,200 inmates who are on remand, citing congestion of the Juba Central Prison.

Built decades ago, the correctional facility officially houses only 400 inmates.

However, Maj. -Gen. Anthony Oliver says there are more than 2,000 inmates currently, some of whom were transferred from across the country.

According to Oliver, of the over 2,000 only 878 have been convicted.

“The total number of prisoners, we have 2,136. We have the number of convicted prisoners 878, remand prisoners 1,258. If you can compare now, you can see the number of remanded prisoners is big,” Oliver told Eye Radio on Tuesday.

He blames the congestion on the legal backlog.

“The congestion of these prisoners is due to delay of cessions not being conducted. The issue of solving the congestion.”

“It will be better if the court authority can conduct speedy trials for the remanded. Those of the police and prosecution to speed up doing their investigations.”

Recently a human rights advocate, blamed the legal backlog on inadequate number of judges and lack of transport.

“There is a need to increase the number of judges at the high courts and the number of judges at county courts,” argued Malual.

“Because you cannot have 13 million people in South Sudan as estimated by the Bureau of Statistics and then you have less than 300 judges. That’s not making sense.”