Friday 5 October 2012

Liberia's prisons

Liberia's state radio yesterday reported that 60 inmates have just escaped from Zwedru Prison in Grand Gedah County (South East Liberia, on the border with Ivory Coast). I can't blame them. Liberia's prisons are amongst the worst in the world when it comes to overcrowding, sanitation, availability of medical supplies, and quantity and quality of food. I spent a few hours in Monrovia's Central Prison in 2007, and it has been at Number One in my "Top Ten Worse Places In The World To Go, EVER", since then. Click on http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-14993991 to read the BBC article with photos about Monrovia's Central Prison. The prison cells I visited were so overcrowded that people were hanging from the bars in hammocks made from rice-sacks, whilst the other cell mates had to sleep in shifts. When they were unlocked, scores of desperate men charged to the stinking latrines to relieve themselves...

God bless the guys of the Prison Fellowship world-wide, as they visit prisons like this one every week! Olly