Every human has the right to be free and to decide how to live his own life, because this is an essential part of our existence as a species. If you take a man’s freedom from him, you literally rob him of the power to control his life and he would be worth nothing more than a pet. The purpose of prison institutions is to show criminals what is the feeling of losing your freedom. Most of them are doing a good job and after experiencing the lack of freedom, many convicts stop committing crimes for fear that they would return. It is simple and it makes total sense. This is especially effective for prisoners with less dangerous crimes like littering or tax evasion. Being in jail for a along with murderers, rapists and much more is a good deterrent. The long dark nights would work as a harsh reminder to follow all the laws and regulations strictly so as to never wind up back inside.
Eventually, the most dangerous criminals end up locked in certain prisons, notoriously for their harsh conditions and brutal treatment. You can probably imagine what it is like to have some of the most violent people locked together in the same place. One thing is for sure – if there is a hell on Earth, it is something similar to those prisons, full of misery, suffering and brutality.
Check out the following list in which you will find fifteen of the most hostile prisons in the world.
1. The Evil Fortress Of Brasil
The 80-year old Carandiru Prison has always been a pool of violence, which is increasing steadily with years passing by. Shockingly, the place has even suffered an AIDS epidemic, wiping out about 20% of the population inside. More than 1,300 prisoners lost their lives in the past 46 years, and nobody knows how many other deaths happened in the facility before someone started counting.
Things escalated badly in 1992 when a mass riot forced the prison management to call for backup. The riot turned into a mass killing of the inmates by the prison guards along with the police forces who came to help them. Most of the prisoners had already surrendered, but that did not save them, as many were killed in their own cells. Amnesty International attempted to close the facility numerous times, but it seems that Carandiru will remain open, and the horrible things happening inside are likely to continue.
2. The Distant Russian Prison On The Frozen Petak Island
When it comes to Russian convicts, there must be something more than a typical prison to be able to correct their behavior and it certainly has to be a place that everyone would fear. If you wonder what kind of a place that might that be, the answer is the prison on Petak Island. Russia’s government really gave their best effort when they built it.
The island is located in the middle of one of Russia’s biggest lakes, and the prison itself is full of the worst criminals the country has seen. Each of them spends about twenty hours every day locked in solitary confinement.
Visitors can come to the prison only twice a year. The majority of convicts lose their sanity before their sentences expire, because the isolation is unbearable. The weather conditions are severe, with temperatures reaching 40 degrees below zero Fahrenheit in January.
3. This Nairobi Prison Is Home To Brutal Events
The Kamiti Maximum Security prison in Nairobi is widely known to be an extremely brutal place. The facility’s capacity is around 1,400 people, but the actual number of convicts is more than 4,000. The buildings lack a water supply system, so the inmates have to carry it in tanks manually every day under the burning sun. Worst of all, the G-block of the Kamiti prison is the root of everything gruesome in the complex, like rapes, sodomy and endless violence.
When smartphones become widely popular, some videos of the horror inside emerged. In 2008, police forces attempted to find and take every single smartphone from the inmates, and the raid escalated in a massive beating, which some of the prisoners recorded on video. The place has seen a cholera epidemic and other preventable diseases.
4. The prison of nightmares in Syria
Decribed as the “Kingdom of death and madness”, the Tadmor Prison does not sound like a fun place to be. People say that all the guards in this Syrian facility are evil, and apparently, they have mastered the only type of entertainment in there – torture. Even the non-violent inmates are left starving on purpose and they eventually turn into skeletons. Meanwhile the guards threaten the problematic convicts with weapons such as axes.
Syria has a specific authoritarian type of government and this means that some political prisoners, whose only crime is their different opinion, eventually find themselves in Tadmor. When someone tried to assassinate the president in the 80s, the obedient servants of the government brutally murdered more than 500 of Tadmor’s prisoners in their own cells.
5. Inmates are forced to live in a morgue-like corpses in Benin
Have you ever heard of Benin? Not many people have, because this is a small country in West Africa, snugged between Nigeria and Togo. Despite being so small, it is the home of some of the most dangerous prisons in the whole world. The Abomey Prison is a perfect example for that. Originally designed to hold about 400 people, nowadays it packs six times more people, including men, women, and children.
The situation inside is so difficult that the inmates sleep in shifts, and people being suffocated to death is an common sight. What is truly horrifying about the place is that the people inside are mostly awaiting trial, which often takes years to happen.
6. The “BANGKOK HILTON” from hell
The Bang Kwang prison is an exceptionally brutal place, and those that have seen what it is like to be inside gave it the ironic nickname “Bangkok Hilton”. The minimal sentence of every inmate there is 25 years, and everyone wears metal shackles on their legs in the first couple of months inside.
The overcrowding is a big problem, and torture is a daily activity. There is no running water inside, the sewers do not work often, and the single daily meal consists of some rice and vegetables. Those sentenced to death via a lethal injection are sometimes notified just a few hours prior to the execution, and they wear iron shackles until the very end.
7. The real hell can be found in this Venezuelan prison
The media sometimes tries to represent Venezuela as a socialist paradise, but it is painfully clear that it is not. Actually, it is quite the opposite, and that is why nobody would be surprised to find a Venezuelan prison in this list. It seems that savagery and socialism are a perfect match.
The above-mentioned prison is La Sabaneta, and like other similar places, it suffers from overcrowding, with more than 25,000 inmates stuffed in a space designed to host 15,000 people. Mass murders are a common thing. Since 1995, more than two hundred people were killed, and about 600 others were wounded. There was a raid back in 2013, which resulted in the discovery of a tunnel used to smuggle in drugs. The guards also found and confiscated more than 22,000 bullet rounds and a large number of weapons.
8. San Quentin Is Obviously Not Doing Anything Good
The oldest prison in California is notorious for the suffering of the inmates inside, and for the .fact that that the late Johnny Cash immortalized it. The facility is equipped with a gas chamber, but it has not been used a single time, because the state regulation requires the execution to be performed via a lethal injection.
The most violent criminals in California come to this prison, and only the strongest among them are able to survive. Even the guards take part in the brutal and savage things that happen inside, A racially-based incident escalated quickly in 2006 with an aftermath of two casualties and a couple of hundred injured prisoners. Common events in San Quentin, nothing special.
9. The true hell on earth might be in Rwanda
The overcrowding problem, which is common for many other prisons, is on another level at the Gitarama Central Prison in Rwanda. The facility detains about 7,000 inmates, despite that its actual capacity is ten times less! One of the main reasons for the staggering number is the genocide that wiped out Rwanda.
People often compare Gitarama to a living hell by the media. The conditions are so severe that men are forced to do everything and eventually die in a cramped area inside a brick house with no roof. Cannibalism is sometimes the only option for the living people inside to survive, feeding on the recently deceased. There is no running water inside, and common preventable diseases outbreak much too often, leaving casualties every time.
10. This American Prison Institution Is Shocking
Barack Obama attempted to close Guantanamo Bay, but it still stands after reducing its population. However, the brutal internal activities are still going on. The prison is on Cuban land, but it has always been an American facility built to hold the most dangerous criminals in the world.
History shows that back in the day people were locked up just for their skin color or religion. Ex-Guantanamo convicts reported that all the inmates are made to take drugs against their will, and they suffer sexual abuse, assaults with barbed wire and carry multiple wounds and scars from different injuries and torture.
11. The violent Rikers island
Rikers Island is a grim place. It has ten jails built on it, with a total capacity of over 12,000 prisoners. Not many people are able to serve their sentence and live to talk about it. These people compare the prison life as living in a city’s most dangerous hood, which is a huge understatement.
SWAT teams helped the management to reduce the cases of stabbing from above 1,000 per year to merely 70. However, there is information about illegal fight clubs protected by some of the guards. Everyday life here includes rape, murder and every kind of abuse that you could imagine.
12. Solitary isolation is permanent here
Every US inmate shakes in fear if you mention the ADX Florence Supermax Prison, located in Colorado. The inmates in this facility live in total isolation from the other, as well as from the guard members. This is obligatory because some of the most dangerous and violent criminals are locked away here. The sole purpose of the facility is to bring pain and misery to the convicts.
Suicides are very frequent here, because most inmates find it unbearable to be locked away for 23 hours a day. Some do it by refusing to eat, but the guards force-feed them in order for the prisoner to continue the life of suffering.
13. This prison has the most ironic name
La Santé is a strange name choice for France’s most violent prison institution, because quite literally it means “The Health”. It speaks for the typical dark sense of humor the French people have. The place features its own internal hierarchy, which represses the weakest among the inmates. Violence is in the air here.
Suicides are common here, as well, with a record 127 cases in 1999. They built the facility like a fortress and this is the reason that there are only three prison breaks recorded since 1987.
14. This Turkish prison is a record-breaking nightmare
The Turkish Diyarbakir Prison holds the grim record for the highest number of violated human rights per prisoner. It is notorious for having underage inmates with brutal sentences, most of which will spend their lives there. Turkey has more than 350 children aged between 13 and 17 who are currently in prison
This facility is overcrowded just like most of the other similar prisons around the world, and violence is common at every corner. The population consists of common criminals and political prisoners. Some inmates set themselves on fire in a desperate attempt to end their stay in this hell, so you could probably imagine how bad the situation must be.
15. A Soviet Relic Of Torture
The Soviet Union has brought a lot of misery to different parts of the globe. One of the former Soviet republics, Georgia, is a good example of such suffering. The country suffered a sudden defeat in the Russian-Georgian War, but it was recently related to an even more horrible news.
The Gladni Prison got so out of control that the country’s government had to step in after a few videos showed many brutal scenes from inside the facility – mass beatings, torture and rape, all carried out by the sadistic guards. An investigation was initiated, and eventually a few guards were fired, but that was not a guaranteed way to stop the horrific events. The things that happen in Gladni Prison show the worst of humanity.
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