©️Victoria Hazou
Port-au-Prince, August 22, 2025.- Invited to the show Panel Magik this Friday, August 22, Marie Yolène Gilles de la Fondasyon Je Klere (FJKL) denounced the inhuman conditions in Haitian prisons. Of the 7,178 prisoners in 14 operational prisons, 82 per cent are in prolonged pretrial detention. The glaring lack of resources sometimes pushes the administration to entrust the keys to the cells to prisoners of trust, a symbol of a prison system in the midst of collapse.
A paralyzed prison system
Haiti officially has 24 prison spaces, but only 14 are still functioning, the others being disused or shaved. These facilities accommodate 7,178 prisoners, of whom 5,843 are without trial and only 1,335 are convicted. Simply put, only 18 per cent of inmates are aware of their sentences, said Gilles.
The prison population comprises 349 women, 234 minors and 24 minors, exposed to the same conditions of overcrowding and deprivation of human rights.
Underequipped and self-delivered prisons
According to United Nations standards, there should be one officer for four detainees. In Haiti, the ratio reaches one officer per ten prisoners, or about 700 officers per 7,000 prisoners. This shortcoming sometimes obliges the administration to let prisoners manage the keys to the cells, an alarming sign of the security chaos in prisons.
Ms. Gilles revealed that the Directorate of Prison Administration had only three doctors for the whole country, all based in Delmas. The 13 other prison centres operate with only a few (er) nurses sometimes very old. In addition, the State allocates only 35 gourdes per day per prisoner for food, which is largely insufficient to meet basic needs.
With the occupation of large areas of the capital by armed gangs, several police stations have been transformed into improvised prison centres, aggravating conditions of detention and confirming the collapse of the country's judicial and security system.
W.A.
