While prisons everywhere are designed to be unattractive places, the prisons in some countries are worse than in others. An article in yesterday’s Daily Nation reveals that life is exceptionally grim for prisoners in Kenya. Prisoners are held for extended periods awaiting trial – some more than ten years. Almost a million cases were pending before the courts at the time of the latest statistics. Prisons are overcrowded, overfilled to between two and three times capacity.
In Kamiti Maximum Security Prison, there is no reliable water supply and inadequate sanitation. Prisoners are packed into severely overcrowded cells. There was an outbreak of cholera a few months ago, and a number of prisoners died, with many more suffering serious illness and being hospitalised. A year earlier a mobile phone video of warders beating a prisoner to death made international headlines.
There is inadequate protection against the transmission of disease within the prisons, and almost all prisoners are suffering some type of serious disease when they are eventually released. Corruption is rife within the prison system, as is sexual abuse, and prisoners are subjected to a continuous barrage of inhuman treatment and appalling conditions.