Sabaneta Prison, Venezuela
Kwan-li-so Number 18 Bukchang prisoner camp in North Korea
Tokyo's Fuchu Prison
ADX Florence Supermax, Colorado
Kwan-li-so, North Korea
PRISON is a grim place, but some are so bad that the prospect of death is a welcome release.
Brutal guards and violent inmates, drugs and disease combine to create a hell on earth.
Some lock-ups are worse than others, but these are the world’s worst, where the physical and mental torture never ends.
Kwan-li-so, North Korea
Entire families of political prisoners are held in this sprawling mountain complex for life. Prisoners are malnourished, suffer injuries which are left untreated, and disease is left unchecked. Inmates labour seven days a week for more than 12 hours a day and are effectively worked to death.
One former guard at the prison, also known as Camp 22, estimated that up to 2,000 people, including children, die every year at this camp, which is one of dozens in North Korea’s system of gulags. There are 50,000 estimated to be detained at the camp at any given time.
Petak Island Prison, Russia
After two years behind bars, members of protest band Pussy Riot have promised to campaign in protest at the hellish conditions in Russia’s jails. The most notorious of these is Petak Island Prison, which is surrounded by the waters of the White Lake. Each inmate is locked inside a maximum security cell for most of the day, completed isolated from other prisoners and guards.
Inmates have died because of freezing temperatures. There is none of the communal fighting, rape and drunkenness common in some Russian prisons, but the regime is so unbending and inhumane that it eventually crushes even the toughest inmates. No-one has escaped in living memory.
Guantanamo Bay, Cuba (US)
The controversial detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, was set up to allow no-holds-barred interrogations of suspected terrorists and captured combatants from the wars in the Middle East.
The military-run facility has become infamous for the physical and psychological torture against inmates. Many have committed suicide, while others on hunger strike were force-fed.
The Bangkok Hilton, Thailand
Officially called Bang Kwang Central Prison, this is one of the world’s most notorious prisons. Every prisoner within the walls has been sentenced to at least 25 years behind bars. Around 10 per cent of them are on death row and so many are executed that locals call it “The Big Tiger”.
Inmates need the support of family on the outside to ensure they survive. It has featured in a number of movies and books thanks to the foreign prisoners who are held there. Earlier this year Belfast man, Tommy McAuley jr (53), died there from TB and medical complications while serving a life sentence for drug smuggling. His family had been fighting a desperate campaign to prove his innocence.
Evin Prison, Iran
Political detainees and criminals alike are held for months in solitary confinement, many without being charged. Others are left blindfolded in over-crowded cells. Their families are not told where inmates are being held.
Drug smugglers and sex-offenders are regularly executed in public hangings, while political dissidents are subjected to brutal treatment, including whippings and rape, it has been claimed. Growing controversy over conditions has been a political battleground between rival factions of the country’s leadership.
ADX Florence Supermax, Colorado
The facility is the largest and most infamous of the 31 so-called supermax jails in the United States – detention centres with the tightest controls to house the most dangerous inmates.
Inmates spend more than 22 hours a day in small cells with little or no sunlight in solitary for years at a time. The isolation can lead prisoners to breakdown. Located in Fremont County, Colorado, many inmates here commit suicide as a result of the isolation policy.
Fuchu Prison, Japan
One south county Dublin man, ‘John’, spent three years in the military-style lock-up for drug-smuggling offences and he previously told the Sunday World about his experience.
“When they punish you, your wrists are cuffed to a belt and you wear shorts with a hole in them so you can go to the toilet but you can’t clean yourself,” he said.
“The food is pushed in through the door and you basically have to get down on your hands and knees and eat it like a dog,” he revealed.
Even at night, if a prisoner kicked the door or made noise out of frustration they could be subdued with a stun gun and carried to the ‘investigation block.’
Sabaneta Prison, Venezuela
Sabaneta is one of the most brutal correctional facilities in South America. There are many diseases which run rampant inside and there is little or no care given to the inmates.
Vastly overcrowded with 25,000 inmates, the level of violence leaves inmates little choice except to align themselves with a faction. The worst episode of violence occurred in 1994, when around 130 inmates were burned or hacked to death with machetes. Late last year, 16 prisoners were killed in a gang fight, some of whom were decapitated.
Kamiti Prison, Kenya
The Kamiti maximum-security prison is located in Nairobi, Kenya, is notorious for rapes and fatal beatings on a daily basis. But even if a prisoner can survive the violence, there are also epidemics of cholera and other diseases that can kill.
eamon.dillon@sundayworld.com