THE REPRESSION OF CIVILIAN PRISONER ESCAPES UNDER CONGOLESE CRIMINAL LAW

For more than a decade, Congolese prisons have been the frequent victims of prisoner escapes. This phenomenon, which has become commonplace in our prisons, undermines the intangibility and inviolability of judicial decisions, and calls into question the authority of the State and the credibility of the judiciary and the Congolese prison service. Seen from this angle, escapes are one of the problems currently facing the Congolese judiciary and prison services, as escape figures have been galloping steadily since the spectacular mass escape of May 17, 2017. Paradoxically, jurisprudence relating to the repression of prisoner escapes is in very short supply compared to the number of reported escape cases. As a result, there is a pragmatic ineffectiveness in punishing the offence under review. So we asked ourselves why this pragmatic ineffectiveness of the repression of the said offence and what could be done to prevent cases of escape.