The inmates at Juba National Prison raised concern of overcrowding in the cell that has forced them to be sleeping in shifts and in dirty toilets due to limited space for sleeping.
As the result, the prisoners said many of them have died of suffocation and diseases resulting from the bad health condition of the cells.
Speaking on Monday during a ministerial inspection in the prison, Nicola Nyieth, an inmate who has spent five years on remand waiting for trial said one will sleep then get up and allow another one to sleep in shifts till morning.
“We have problem of accommodation, this long cell you see here is one room taking 215 and this is not the capacity it’s supposed to take. This room is meant to accommodate 80 people. How do we sleep? We sleep on one another. People are sleeping in shifts and others sleep in the toilets and bathrooms,” Nyieth said.
Nyieth said the facilities are not healthy and they end up contracting diseases that will not be treated due to lack of medicines.
“We don’t have medicines. When someone fall sick, he will be in this dirty prison with that sickness and after a month, he will die because when they are taken to hospital, there are no medicines, and they will bring him back to this dirty prison,” he said.
“We’re witnessing the death of our brothers like people who have no people. Yesterday somebody died. He has been here for four years, and he has never seen court with his eyes one day.”
The Prison director lieutenant General Atok Atem, confirm that the prison is highly overcrowded and facing a number of challenges as mentioned by the inmate.
“The prison is highly overcrowded as you can see, this is just men prison alone and you can see the number. I once visited them, and I witnessed them sleeping in shifts. I found others were sleeping and others were waiting for their shift,” Atem testified. “It’s true I have witnessed people sleeping in the toilets because the place cannot accommodate all of them.”
He said the facility was constructed in the 1940s to accommodate at least 500 inmates but today they are accommodating over 500 percent of the capacity.
The facility is currently accommodating195 convicts on death row, 659 other convicts, 1,618 remand inmates, 73 remanded juveniles, and 285 women.
“The trial of those remanded and waiting is taking long. Like there is somebody who has been here for 4 years, and he not seen the court,” Atem stated.
The director also confirmed that the prison is facing a challenge of people dying in prison due to overstaying in unhealthy prison condition without trying their cases.
“We have problem of people dying in the prison. Most of the inmates die of suffocation due to overcrowding in the prison,” said Gen. Atem.
Atem said with the nature of the infrastructure and the administration, the administration is facing difficulties in managing the facility after ICRC which used to support them in renovating the prison and maintaining hygiene and sanitation stopped giving the services.
“Despite the difficulties, we are exerting efforts to reduce the inmates by transferring some of them to other prisons, police detention facilities, and courts, especially when they are sick contrary to our mandate as prison service,” he said.
On Monday, the minister of Interior Angelina Teny and the minister of Justice Ruben Madol visited the prison to inspect the situation of the facility and inmates.
The two ministers pledged to reduce the overcrowding in the facility by ensuring the cases of many are tried to reduce the number of inmates.
