Prisons can be some of the most dangerous places in any country. We are about to visit the worst
prison systems in the world. Committing a crime that lands you in jail in any of these
countries may be the last thing you ever do, as those who go in almost never come out. As
we make our way through the nations with the worst prisons, you may be surprised to find
that some of the most developed nations on the planet have made it onto our list.
15th worst prison system in the world. You probably didn’t expect to find the United
States on this list did you? The United States of America has the most incarcerated people out
of any country in the world. There are just over 2 million people in its prison system,
which makes the U.S. incarceration rate about 629 people per every 100,000.
These numbers are really concerning, and although the living conditions inside U.S. prisons tend to
be slightly better than in other countries on our list, human rights violations still occur.
The United States prisons have many of the same problems as others, especially when it comes to
gang and racially motivated violence within the system. There are rarely enough guards,
and even when a prison is fully staffed, it doesn’t stop the violence that occurs. This
is a systemic problem in both the United States and around the world. The U.S. also doesn’t have
a great track record of providing inmates with mental health disorders the help they need.
They shouldn’t be in the general population, but this is often where they end up anyways.
Abuse of power is also a problem in some U.S. prisons. Take Rikers Island,
for instance. This detention facility in the New York City borough of Queens is
made up of 10 different jails that house men, women, and youths. It was uncovered that the
guards at the facility were running an underground operation where they
would have certain inmates attack other prisoners who were giving them problems.
The United States also uses solitary confinement pretty liberally with inmates.
Solitary confinement is widely accepted to violate human rights standards. Yet,
at Rikers and across the nation, prisoners find themselves in solitary confinement
for disciplinary actions even if they have a mental health disorder.
The main problem with the United States prison system is that many facilities are privately
owned and operated, which leads to corners being cut at the expense of prisoners’ rights. Even in
state-run facilities, however, there are practices that are outdated. The United
States is the third most populous country on the planet, has the highest GDP out of any nation,
and boasts about its freedom to anyone who will listen, yet it puts more people
in jail than any other nation in the world. Let that sink in for a moment.
14th worst prison system in the world. Singapore is a city-state with a massive amount of wealth
relative to its size. However, having a lot of money doesn’t mean their prisons
are luxurious. You can get thrown in jail for something as simple as jaywalking or
littering in Singapore. And once you’re in the system, it is incredibly hard to get out.
Singapore is consistently ranked as the seventh-worst justice system in the entire world.
It is slow, and someone can be thrown in jail for the smallest offense. Once in a Sinapore prison,
it is not uncommon to be abused by the guards and even punished through bamboo
stick lashings. Human rights organizations have brought these practices to the world's
attention through high-profile cases, yet there seems to be little reform within the prisons
themselves. The liberal use of corporal punishment along with how easy it is to
find yourself in Singapore’s prison system, are the main reasons why it made this list.
This next country is one that you probably can’t point to on a map.
In fact, you might not even know what continent it is a part of.
13th worst prison system in the world. Benin is a country in western Africa that sits between
Togo and Nigeria. It is not a wealthy nation with a GDP of around 15.65 billion dollars as of 2020.
A lack of resources means that certain social programs are underfunded. In Benin’s case,
this includes the prison system. What makes it so terrible is that everything
moves incredibly slowly. People who are arrested find themselves stuck in prison
for years while awaiting their trial. There is no option other than to wait in a cramped
cell with other offenders until the judicial system eventually gets around to your case.
While you await your hearing, or after you’re convicted, you will find yourself in a prison that
is over capacity by around 300%. The detention facilities themselves are bursting at the seams,
with inmates having to share cells with multiple other people even if there are
not enough beds for everyone. An example of this is Cotonou Prison. It was originally designed
to hold 400 prisoners but now contains over 2,000 inmates at any given time.
With the prisons in Benin being so obscenely overcapacity, disease and illnesses run rampant.
Inmates regularly become sick while awaiting trial, and since this process can take years,
many die in prison before they even get a chance to go to court.
Torture is fairly common in this next prison system,
which is why you definitely don’t want to be arrested in this country.
12th worst prison system in the world. Georgia, the country, not the state,
uses some questionable practices in its prisons. Human rights organizations found that torture was
regularly practiced on inmates in the system. In 2012, video footage of inmates being beaten
and sexually assaulted by prison staff at Gldani Prison was uncovered. This video led
to mass protests in the country and outcries for the government to reform the system.
This led the government to issue a "zero tolerance for violation of human rights"
policy for their prisons, but it isn’t clear how much has actually changed over the years. Living
conditions are still brutal inside some Georgian prisons, and human rights abuses have continued
even after reforms were put into place. It’s the heavyhanded tactics that prison guards use to
extract information and keep inmates in line that make the prisons in Georgia so dangerous to be in.
11th worst prison system in the world. Indonesian prisons tend to be overcrowded
and poorly maintained. But this isn’t the only reason this country made the list.
In a recent survey, it was found that Indonesia’s legal system was the most
complicated to navigate in all of Asia. This complexity means that people often
fall through the cracks and get left in prison for much longer than they should.
Indonesian prisons tend to be run under harsh rule that uses corporal punishment as the main method
for keeping order. In fact, some regions of the country still follow Sharia law,
which means that certain crimes committed inside and outside of prison, such as drug smuggling,
are punishable by death. If an inmate is caught with drugs within the prison walls, there is
no investigation needed. They are immediately executed for their crime, oftentimes by hanging.
To be clear, this is not true for every prison in the country, but the fact that immediate judgment
is passed for certain broken rules makes an Indonesian prison a dangerous place to be.
This next country has a huge population and a huge problem with prison brawls within its system.
10th worst prison system in the world. India is a large country with a lot of people. This
means it needs to have a ton of prisons to deal with lawbreakers. Unfortunately,
countries with large populations tend to struggle with the upkeep of some services
just because of the sheer number of people who use them every day. One of the biggest problems
in India is maintaining clean, up-to-date detention facilities to house criminals.
The prisons in India are overcrowded and understaffed. Large complexes
that were built decades ago have become rundown
and outdated. One prime example of this is Arthur Road Jail in Mumbai.
Arthur Road Jail is known for gang wars that rage within the prison itself. Since there
aren’t enough staff to control the population, these brawls can lead to
serious injury and even death for some of the inmates. The guards who try and break
up the fights are often injured, making this prison system dangerous for everyone involved.
The overcrowding also means that the spread of disease gets out of hand very quickly.
If someone becomes infected with a virus or bacterial infection, it does not take long
before the disease spreads throughout the inmate population. During the COVID-19 pandemic, this
ended up being a huge problem in prison systems around the world. In India alone, thousands of
inmates died as a result of how quickly the virus spread through the crowded facilities.
You can be thrown in jail in this next country without even being told what you did wrong.
9th worst prison system in the world. Nigeria, in general,
struggles with human rights violations. In fact, militant groups such as Boko Haram and
ISWAP still terrorize citizens and abduct large numbers of people every year. With so much chaos
happening throughout parts of the nation, you can only imagine how terrible the prisons are.
The craziest thing about Nigerian prisons is that around two-thirds of all inmates
are there without ever being charged with a crime. If you are detained in Nigeria,
law enforcement does not need to tell you why you are being
arrested before throwing you in jail. This obviously has serious consequences for the
prison system. They are overcrowded and filled with people who may be innocent.
It can take up to a decade before your case is even heard by a judge, which means you have to
fight to survive for years in the terrible prison conditions just to find out what you
did wrong. Not everyone in Nigerian prisons is wrongfully put there. Extremists who have
committed countless atrocities may be in the same cell as someone who has never broken the law in
their life. It is not only an incredibly unfair system but an extremely dangerous one as well.
We are now entering the worst of the worst.
8th worst prison system in the world. Argentina has made a lot of progress
through the years. However, the prison system in this South American country is still pretty
rough. Many prisons are way over capacity, and in some prisons like Mendoza Prison,
five inmates can be crowded into a single cell that was meant for only two.
Depending on where the prison is located, there may be no running water or sewage system,
which means that inmates are forced to use plastic bags and bottles to do their business. Obviously,
this is not very hygienic, especially when cells are over capacity and can
lead to diseases and illnesses spreading rapidly within a cell block. It’s reported
that there are very few medical staff available in the prisons of Argentina,
and at some facilities, the only time a prisoner will ever see a doctor is if they die.
In some prisons, the inmates sleep on cold concrete floors because there are not enough beds
to go around. With so much discomfort, riots are not uncommon. This is dangerous for the prisoners
and the guards. Whenever the prisoners rebel, people die. The prison system in the country
has a long way to go, and with every year that passes, the prisons get more and more crowded.
Our next prison system is not only 7th on our list
but has the 8th highest rate of incarceration in the world.
7th worst prison system in the world. Thailand's incarceration rate is around
445 inmates for every 100,000 people. But the high incarceration rate is not
the most surprising thing about this prison system. In certain facilities,
the inmate population is divided into classes. If you find yourself in the lower class, you could be
doing the chores for the upper-class inmates in exchange for food and basic necessities.
This leads to all sorts of problems within the prisons, such as people being taken advantage of
and terrible working conditions for the lower class of prisoners. The reason this structure
developed is that in some prisons, the only way to get enough food to survive is to buy it from the
commissary. The only free food served each day is a bowl of rice or soup. If inmates want something
else to eat, they need to purchase it. However, only the wealthy inmates can afford to do this.
It has been reported that the meals served by the prisons often contained spoiled food
with maggots in it, which makes the food practically inedible. Another problem with
the class system in Thai prisons is that crimes such as stealing and mugging happen
constantly. The guards rarely intervene in these circumstances, which makes life in
these prisons not only miserable but dangerous. The conditions of many Thai prisons do not meet
basic health standards, especially if you find yourself in one of the lower classes.
This next prison system is known for being brutal to the point where
anyone who ends up in jail expects to be seriously hurt or die there.
6th worst prison system in the world. The oppressive regime in Syria commits human
rights violations daily. People are killed in public by the government,
which is a good indication that what happens in their prison system
is truly terrible. Many of the prison facilities were built over 50 years ago,
and some date back to the 1930s. This means the system is literally falling apart.
Guards in Syrian prisons regularly torture and abuse the inmates. Fear and pain are used daily
to keep prisoners in line. One Palestinian writer named Salameh Kaileh wrote about his
time in one of the worst prisons in Syria called Tadmur Prison. He recounted that the
prisoners were stripped of their basic human rights and abused by the prison staff. He
was tortured and beaten within inches of his life. Tadmur was recently destroyed,
but the atrocities seen at this prison still happen at other facilities across the country.
Perhaps one of the scariest parts of being in prison in Syria is that if there is a
shift in power, you never know what the next ruler is going to do. In the past,
hundreds and even thousands of prisoners have been slaughtered by military personnel for opposing the
current leadership or because of their beliefs. One Syrian prisoner who made it out alive said:
"When death is a daily occurrence, lurking in torture, random beatings, eye-gouging,
broken limbs and crushed fingers... wouldn't you welcome the merciful
release of a bullet?” It seems that being a prisoner in Syria may be worse than death.
We are now in the top 5 countries with the worst prison systems in the world
and this next one deserves its spot on our list.
5th worst prison system in the world. Venezuela can be a rough country to
be in. There is corruption within different parts of the government,
but this problem is particularly bad within the legal system. It’s estimated that the prisons in
Venezuela are currently 250% overcapacity. This has created unsafe conditions within detention
facilities as there are just not enough staff to control such large populations of inmates.
La Sabaneta Prison was one of the worst facilities in the entire world. In 2013
the inmates rioted as a result of poor living conditions and human rights violations. Around
160 inmates lost their lives during the prison break. This just goes to show how terrible life
in a Venezuelan prison can be. But this isn’t an isolated incident. The terrible conditions
within Venezuela have led to human rights organizations condemning the system as a whole.
Gang violence is a huge problem in Venezuelan prisons. Rival gang members use improvised
weapons to disfigure and even kill one another. Again, this isn’t just isolated to one prison
but seems to be the norm. In some facilities, rival gangs get placed in the same cell blocks
even though the outcome is inevitably going to be violence and death. Venezuela has one
of the highest homicide rates in the world, both inside and outside of its prisons.
You can’t rely on the understaffed guards to protect you if a fight breaks out,
and you will likely be stuck in the system for years as the overcrowding
of the prison system is getting worse and worse. Having 1 guard for every 150 inmates
is not out of the norm in Venezuelan prisons, and some officials even claim
that around 80% of the facilities in their system are actually run by armed inmates.
The next country on our list should come as no surprise at all. In fact,
you’ll probably be shocked that it’s not number 1.
4th worst prison system in the world. Living in North Korea is like living in one big prison. For
many North Koreans, they might not be detained, but they feel like prisoners within their own
borders, and Kim Jong-un is the abusive warden. Yet, even though the living conditions for many
in the country are awful, being in prison in North Korea is a real-life nightmare.
Camp 22, also known as the Hoeryong concentration camp, was shut down in 2012 after egregious human
rights violations and corruption was uncovered there. However, all of those prisoners were then
sent to other facilities where the conditions weren’t much better. There are reports of human
experimentation along with torture and abuses of all kinds within the North Korean prison system.
Inmates in North Korea constantly live in fear as the judicial system isn’t based
on fairness but the whims of those in power. They could be doing backbreaking manual labor
one day and hung the next without any sort of trial or warning. If someone becomes injured,
it’s highly unlikely they will get to see a doctor. If they do end up on the operating table,
it will be with an inexperienced med student who is only there to practice
their procedures before conducting them on the general public. Being in a North
Korean prison is like being a guinea pig in the most dangerous cage in the world.
We are warning you now: the top three worst prison systems in the
world are absolutely brutal. So, be ready for some insane facts.
3rd worst prison system in the world. China is the most populous country on the planet, with close
to 1.5 billion people within its borders. This means that no matter how many prisons are built,
they will always seem overcrowded. Right now it’s difficult to say just how terrible the
conditions are in China because of restricted access by the state, but horror stories of
people who have survived a Chinese prison and escaped the country are absolutely terrifying.
Human rights abuses run rampant. The structures are dated and not well maintained. Oftentimes,
inmates are living in their own filth as prisons are overlooked by the government and are not a
top priority for repairs. Illnesses pass through the population like wildfire,
and very little medical attention is given to inmates as the prisons
just don’t have the staff to support the number of people incarcerated.
The worst of the worst is the Urumqi No. 3 Detention Centre in Dabancheng. Although
China calls this a prison, it’s more of a concentration camp. China claims that this
is just a normal prison, but it has been found to only hold Uyghur Muslims. The Chinese State
has made it clear using no uncertain terms that they do not want the Uyghur Muslim people within
their borders, and it appears they are taking a genocidal approach to getting rid of them.
Urumqi No. 3 is over 220 acres in size and holds around 10,000 inmates, almost all of
which are Muslim. In 2019 an additional 9 miles of buildings were constructed at the prison to
hold more individuals. Most of the people within this complex haven't been arrested
for any crime except for being Muslim. They are tortured using numerous methods, a favorite of
which seems to be by electric baton, as one teacher who worked at the facility reported.
Pretty much every single right a human has is violated at Urumqi No. 3 Detention Centre. It’s
full of pain and suffering. This may be the worst prison in China and perhaps the world,
with the entire system being run by the ideologies of the State. This means that
if you disagree with the people in power and find yourself in prison,
you could disappear without a trace, and no one would ever know what happened to you.
2nd worst prison system in the world. Russia. Need we say more? Probably not,
but we will. The largest country in the world has some of the largest
problems in its prison system. If you find yourself in a Russian prison,
it likely means you will be underfed, freezing all of the time, and stuck there until you die.
Overcrowding in Russian prisons seems to be a huge problem. Facilities that
were designed to only have 10 prisoners per cell end up with ten times that many. This
may be somewhat beneficial as more body heat might keep the inmates from freezing to death,
but it also leads to all kinds of other problems such as terrible hygiene and constant fights
over space to sleep. Tuberculosis and HIV are two prevalent diseases in the Russian prison system,
both of which could be mitigated with medicine and proper distribution of inmates. However,
neither of these things seem to happen in Russian prisons.
In some Russian facilities, inmates who can’t be with the general population spend every
day of their sentence in cages. There is no recreation, no interaction with other people,
and no way to pass the time other than with their own thoughts. This has led to a very high rate of
mental breakdowns and disorders developing in the inmate population. The guards at all of the
detention facilities are vastly outnumbered by the prisoners due to overcrowding and improper
staffing. This has led to guards resorting to brutal tactics to keep the inmates in line.
Torture is common. Inmates can be dragged out of their cells just to be whipped or
beaten to get a point across. Human rights organizations are not granted access to these
prisons and anyone who speaks out against the conditions in them is likely to find
themselves behind bars at the hands of the Russian government. The harsh treatment of
inmates and the abuses of the prison staff make Russian prisons some of the worst in the world.
The worst prison system in the world is in the country of Rwanda. It ranks 2nd in the
world for incarceration rates at around 580 inmates per every 100,000 people.
Rwanda is also home to the most crowded prison in the world. It’s Muhanga Prison,
formerly known as Gitarama Prison is perhaps the best showcase of this. This facility has over
7,000 inmates within its walls but was originally designed to only hold 400. Many of the people
in this and other prisons in the country took part in the Rwandan Genocide. Finding yourself
in a Rwandan prison could put you face to face with some very dangerous people.
Due to the overcrowding in the prisons, cells are rarely used. Instead, inmates are contained
within larger rooms and the courtyards of the facilities. If a fight breaks out,
it’s unlikely the guards will be able to break it up before someone is seriously injured or killed.
The hygiene within the prisons is terrible because so many people are packed in tightly
together. There is a full-time doctor at the larger prisons such as Gitarama,
but their main responsibility is to amputate limbs that have become infected with gangrene
from open wounds and unsanitary conditions. The floors can be covered with feces,
which exasperates the problems of bacterial and fungal infections. The smell of some of the more
crowded Rwandan prisons is so horrendous that it can be smelt for miles. It’s reported that around
1 in 8 prisoners dies from either disease or violence in the Rwandan prison system each year.
Now watch “50 Things Nobody Tells You About Being in Prison.” Or
check out “What Happens In The H Unit At Federal Supermax Prison?”