Broken jails broken justice: thousands of prisoners across Africa wait years for their day in court, all the white riving in unspeakably horrible conditions.

Since Nov. 10, 1999, Lackson Sikayenera has been incarcerated in Maula Prison in central Malawi. He spends 14 hours each day in a cell with 160 other men, packed on the concrete floor, unable even to move. The water is dirty; the toilets foul. Disease runs rampant.

But the worst part may be that the charges against Sikayenera, who is accused of killing his brother, have not yet reached a court. Almost certainly, they never will. His case file is lost.

"Who took my file? Why do I suffer like this?" he asks. This is life in Malawi's high-security prisons. Prosecutors, judges, even prison wardens agree that conditions are unbearable, confinements intolerably long, and justice scandalously uneven.

Most African governments spend little on justice, and what little is spent goes mostly to the police and courts, says Marie-Dominique Parent, the regional director of Penal Reform International, a British advocacy group. Prisons, she says, "are at the bottom of the heap."

With so much misery among law-abiding citizens, the world's poorest nations have little incentive to improve convicts' lives. The problem is, most people in African prisons aren't convicts. In the United States, the Sixth Amendment guarantees anyone accused of a crime the right to a speedy trial, but across Africa, the lack of resources translates to long, inhumane waits before getting one's day in court.

The results are shocking: Two thirds of Uganda's 18,000 prison inmates have not been tried. The same is true of three quarters of Mozambique's prisoners, and four fifths of Cameroon's. Even in South Africa, Africa's most advanced nation, some inmates in Johannesburg Prison have waited seven years to see a judge.

BADLY BROKEN SYSTEM

It's a systematic failure of the judicial system, says Susan Rice, an Africa expert at the Brookings Institution, and it has ramifications beyond the thousands of people stuck in prisons. "It makes for a broader society in which fear has to play a fairly substantial role," she says. "If you can be arrested without cause and have no hope of ever seeing an attorney or seeing a day in court--even if it's inadvertent, it must undermine confidence in the state."

Indeed, some of Africa's million or so prisoners--nobody knows exactly how many--are not lawbreakers, but victims of incompetence or corruption or justice systems that are simply understaffed, underfinanced, and overwhelmed. Kenya's former prisons commissioner suggested in 2004 that with proper legal representation, 20 percent of his nation's 55,000 prisoners might be declared innocent.

Meanwhile, across Africa, prison conditions are horrible. Black Beach Prison in Equatorial Guinea is notorious for torture. Food is so scarce in Zambia's jails that gangs wield it as an instrument of power. Congo's prisons have housed children as young as eight years old. Kenyan prisoners die from easily curable ailments like diarrhea.

The most immediate and apparent inhumanity is the overcrowding that Africa's broken justice systems breed, compounded by disease, filth, abuse, and a lack of food, soap, beds, clothes, or recreation. Luzira Prison, Uganda's largest, holds 5,000 in a 1950s facility built for 600. Babati Prison in Tanzania, built for 50 inmates, houses almost 600.

"This is not a hotel, where we can accommodate no more than our capacity," says Tobias Nowa, Malawi's commissioner of prison operations. "We must accommodate whomever is sent to us."

NO MONEY FOR TRIALS

Paradoxically, the recent arrival of democracy in many countries after years of dictatorships has aggravated the problems of Africa's justice systems. Freedom has permitted lawlessness, newly empowered citizens have demanded order--and governments have delivered. Malawi's prison population has more than doubled since the dictatorship ended in 1994. But its legal system remains badly broken. The country's 12 million citizens have 28 legal-aid attorneys and eight prosecutors with law degrees. That means almost all accused go to trial without lawyers.

"We get convictions that aren't supposed to be convictions, and acquittals that aren't supposed to be acquittals," says Justice Andrew Nyirenda, chief of Malawi's High Court.

The High Court must pass judgment on all homicides, but it has not heard a single case in the last year. There is no money to assemble lawyers, judges, and witnesses for hearings; no money to empanel juries as required since 1995; and no money to keep a written record.

Ishmael Wadi, Malawi's director of public prosecutions, says his eight prosecutors have a backlog of 173 untried robbery and theft cases, 388 fatal accident cases, and 867 homicide cases. And the caseload is rising. The interminable wait between arrest and courtroom torments the innocent and lets the guilty escape justice. Evidence in police stations is misplaced or discarded. Witnesses die and move away.

2,100 DAYS AGO

Built 40 years ago to house 800 inmates, Maula Prison now holds some 1,800 inmates. Sikayenera lives in Maula's Cell 3, one of 160 men in a pen the size of a two-car garage.

Once a farmer, Sikayenera was sent here after he killed his elder brother Jonas. Their father, he says, gave him a choice tobacco plot that Jonas claimed was rightfully his.

Jonas threatened to kill him if he did not surrender it. Lackson refused, he says, and Jonas attacked.

"To protect myself, I took a hoe handle and hit my brother on the forehead, and he fainted," he says. "Then I went to the police to report that I had harmed my brother." The police jailed him, then moved him to Maula Prison a week later. That was more than 2,100 days ago.

He and the other men spend daytime in the prison yard, a field of yellow dust with an outdoor privy, a communal shower, and one water spigot. At 4 p.m., they are herded into a dozen concrete cells. Fourteen hours later, at 6 a.m., they are let out again. Prisoners sleep on blankets on the floor, too tightly packed to reach the toilet--too packed, in fact, even to turn in their sleep (see cover photo).

"It is so unhygienic here," Sikayenera says. "Basically, if you need any source of water, you have to get it from the toilet. The showers, most of them are broken. There is a lot of dysentery. A lot of the time, the water isn't running."

Maula Prison's commanding officer disputes none of that. "They were designed for 50 or 60 people in one cell," he says. "But now it's 150, 155. If you talk of human rights, there is no way you can put 150 people in one room."

These conditions exact a cruel toll. Maula Prison lost an average of 30 prisoners a year in 2003 and 2004--about one death per 60 inmates. The average for American prisons is one death per 330 inmates.

"It's just unbearable," says Frances Daka, 32, jailed on an unresolved murder charge since 2002. "We make ourselves live, just to survive."

BACKGROUND

According to a British government study, more than 8.7 million people are being held in jails around the world. Jail conditions vary widely. But in places like Africa, conditions are often appalling because generally high rates of poverty leave little incentive for governments to spend scarce resources on prisoners.

BEFORE READING

* Write habeas corpus ("have the body"] on the board. Do students know what the term means? Explain that in the U.S. it is a legal requirement that arrested persons be brought before a court and charged with a crime to prevent illegal imprisonment. This article demonstrates what can happen where there is no right of habeas corpus.

CRITICAL THINKING

* Direct attention to the comment of the Brookings Institutions Susan Rice, on page 14. Ask students what they think she means when she says unfair justice systems undermine confidence in the state. (One possible response: people may lose respect for the law if they see that the law does not respect the people.) How is this likely to affect society?

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

* Should African government officials be blamed for the terrible conditions in their jails, given the widespread poverty in their nations?

* Should relatively wealthy regions like the U.S. and European Union, which send aid to African nations, insist that a portion of their aid go toward improving prison conditions in Africa?

WRITING PROMPT

* Assign students to write a letter to the editor on behalf of a man who has not been convicted of any crime, but languishes in Maula Prison.

t FAST FACT

* The median jail rate for West and Central Africa is 50 prisoners per 100.000 citizens. In southern Africa, the ratio rises to 362 per 100,000 citizens.

WEB WATCH

www.homeoffice.gov.uk/rds/pdfs2/r188.pdf A British government report shows numbers of prisoners in 205 countries and dependencies.

Jails are not supposed to be a pleasant places. But jail conditions vary greatly--from the clean and relatively comfortable institutions in Scandinavia to the dungeon-like facilities in many of the poorest nations.

In the tatter group are the jails of Africa. Not only is there severe overcrowding, filth, and disease, but it is common for prisoners to spend years behind bars awaiting a trial

Aside from the variable treatment of prisoners, countries have widely different rates of imprisonment. Prison rates are affected by a number of factors. Among these are the quality of the police and justice systems and the propensity of people to commit crimes.

This graph shows the rates of imprisonment in 12 African countries, including eight of those identified in the map of Africa on page 13 of the magazine.

ANALYZE THE GRAPH

1. Namibia, located in southwest Africa, has an imprisonment rate almost twice that of --.

2. Suppose the President of Kenya grants clemency to some prisoners. If Kenya's prison rate fell 20 percent it would be approximately

(a) 92 (c) 80 (b) 85 (d) 75

3. If you cut the United States prison rate by 60 percent, you would get a prison rate just slightly above that of the African country of --.

4. If you add the rates of Zambia and Tanzania, you get a rate almost equal, to that of --.

5. Mauritius, an island off the coast of East Africa that is not shown on the graph, has a prison rate almost exactly half that of South Africa. The prison rate on the island of Mauritius is

(a) 175 (c) 235 (b) 203 (d) 242

6. What is the difference between Botswana's prison rate and Tunisia's prison rate?

(a) 110 (c) 130 (b) 120 (d) 140

7. If Uganda's prison rate grew by 2 percent in each of the next four years, in 2010 it would be about

(a) 90 (c) 97 (b) 101 (d) 105

8. Libya, not shown, has a prison rate about half that of Tunisia. Libya's rate is

(a) 150 (c) 110 (b) 140 (d) 127

1. Cameroon

2. [a] 92

3. Namibia

4. Tunisia

5. [b] 203

6. [c] 130

7. [c] 97

8. [d] 127

1. What little money that is spent on Africa's justice systems goes mostly to

a defense attorneys.

b rehabilitation programs.

c the police and courts.

d legal education.

2. Briefly explain why the world's poorest countries have little incentive to spend much money on their prisons --.

3. "Broken Jails Broken Justice" reports that thousands of people being held in Africa's prisons are not convicts because they

a are innocent.

b did not have adequate legal representation.

c are being housed in inadequate facilities.

d have never been tried for their alleged crimes.

4. The most visible inhumanity experienced in Africa's prisons is

a overcrowding.

b not seeing friends and relatives.

c lack of adequate health care.

d isolation.

5. Briefly explain why a sizable number of people in Africa are in prison when they have not broken any laws --.

6. The dawning of democracy in many African nations has brought with it a rise in the prison population. Which of the following statements helps explain this trend?

a African nations are building more jails.

b African populations are rising rapidly.

c There is more corruption in legal systems.

d Citizens are demanding order, and governments are delivering.

IN-DEPTH QUESTIONS

1. Suppose Malawi's government asks the U.S. to return a Malawi citizen wanted for a nonviolent crime. Should the U.S., knowing what jails are like in Malawi, return the person or try to make some other arrangement for punishment?

2. In many states budgets are tight and jails are over-crowded. Should states spend scarce resources refurbishing jails so prisoners are less crowded?

1. [c] the police and courts.

2. Their taw-abiding citizens live in misery (or are poor). (Similar wording is acceptable.)

3. [d] have never been tried for their alleged crimes.

4. [a] overcrowding.

5. They are victims of incompetence, corruption, a broken system. (Similar wording is acceptable.)

6. [d] Citizens are demanding order, and governments are delivering.

Michael Wines covers Africa for The New York Times. He is based in Johannesburg South Africa. Additional reporting by Patrida Smith.