Prison conditions were rudimentary, harsh, and substantially below international standards. Prison conditions outside Bangui generally were worse than those in the capital. Police, gendarme investigators, and presidential guards assigned as prison wardens continued to subject prison inmates to torture and other forms of inhuman, cruel, and degrading treatment. Most prisons lacked basic sanitation and ventilation, electric lighting, basic and emergency medical care, and sufficient access to potable water.
Basic necessities, including food, clothing, and medicine, were inadequate and often confiscated by prison officials. Prisoners depended on family members to supplement inadequate prison meals and sometimes were allowed to forage for food near the prison. According to international observers and prison officials, prison detainees outside Bangui received a meal only every two to three days from prison authorities and sometimes had to pay bribes to prison guards to secure food brought to them by their relatives. As in previous years, there continued to be reports of occasional deaths in prison due to adverse conditions and negligence, including lack of medical treatment for those afflicted by tuberculosis. Two deaths were reported during the year by prison authorities; however, many detainees were medically released to hospitals if illnesses become life threatening or grave.
As of November there were 845 prisoners, of whom 69 were female. Poor recordkeeping and incomplete access for observers prevented an accurate count of the prison population. Male and female prisoners were held in separate facilities in Bangui. Elsewhere male and female prisoners were housed together, but in separate cells. Juveniles were sometimes held with adult prisoners, and pretrial detainees were not held separately from convicted prisoners.
In some cases prisoners deemed a security threat were detained for extended periods without trial at Camp de Roux, a military facility in Bangui not designed as a prison. Access to visitors at Camp de Roux was substantially more difficult than access to the general prison population.
In most cases prisoners and detainees had reasonable access to visitors and were permitted religious observance. The Attorney General’s Office granted visitation privileges, but those wishing to visit prisoners often had to bribe prison guards and officials.
There was no ombudsman system in the country.
According to several human rights lawyers, while prison detainees have the right to submit complaints in the case of mistreatment, it was generally the detainees’ lawyers, if a detainee had one, who alerted judicial authorities to the mistreatment of their clients. Victims of mistreatment hesitated to lodge formal complaints due to fear of reprisal from prison officials.
Authorities rarely initiated investigations of abuses in the prison system.
Prison recordkeeping was inadequate and largely nonexistent. Authorities took no steps to improve recordkeeping but were responsive to requests for data. In some cases juvenile or nonviolent offenders were released following trial rather than being incarcerated. Conditions for women prisoners in Bimbo Central Prison were deemed by a UN team to be substantially better than those in other prisons and in conformance with international standards.
Prison administrators submitted reports describing the poor detention conditions, but these reports did not result in any action.
Pretrial detainees were not held separately from convicted prisoners. As of November there were 366 pretrial detainees in Ngaragba Prison and 18 in Bimbo Central Prison. In some cases pretrial detainees were kept for short periods to ensure their personal security against mob violence, but in others detainees had been held without trial for years.
There were two prisons in Bangui, Ngaragba Prison for men and Bimbo Central Prison for women. Inmates with infectious diseases were not segregated from other inmates but often were medically released to a hospital if illnesses were severe. A nurse was available at the two prisons for inmates needing medical care. Detainees and inmates at both prisons received one meal per day. Food was insufficient, and prisoners complained of inferior ingredients. Families were allowed to bring food. Inmates slept on the floor or on thin matting provided by families or charities. Authorities at Ngaragba Prison permitted detainees’ families to make weekly visits. As of November Bimbo Central Prison held 30 female inmates. Several had been detained for months and had not appeared before a judge; few had lawyers.
Overcrowding was reportedly not a problem, and children younger than five years old were allowed to stay with their mothers at the prison.
As of November there were 517 inmates in Ngaragba Prison. Several were detainees who had been held for months without appearing before a judge. Twelve prisoners were detained on accusations of sorcery and five others had been convicted of the crime. The more crowded cells each held approximately 30 to 40 inmates. Prisoners usually slept on bare concrete and complained that water supplies were inadequate. In the section reserved primarily for educated prisoners and former government officials suspected or convicted of financial crimes, cells held four to eight persons.
There were no further developments in the 2010 attempted rape of a female prisoner by a prison guard in Bimbo Central Prison and the sexual assault of another prisoner by a military guard in Boda Prison.
Conditions in detention centers were worse than those in prisons. Bangui’s police detention centers consisted of overcrowded cells with very little light and leaky buckets for toilets. Poor sanitation and negligence by authorities posed a serious health risk to detainees. According to local human rights groups, lack of training and poor supervision at detention centers were serious problems and continued to result in torture and beatings. Suspects in police and gendarmerie cells had to depend on family, friends, religious groups, and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) for food. Detainees with infectious diseases were not segregated from other detainees, and medicine was not available. Suspects generally slept on bare cement or dirt floors. Corruption among guards was pervasive. Guards often demanded between 200-300 CFA francs (approximately $0.40-$0.60) to permit showers, delivery of food and water, or family visits. International observers noted that the detention center in the gendarmerie in Bouar had neither windows nor a toilet, only a bucket that was emptied every other day. Detainees at the police facility in Bouar slept chained to each other, a measure the police justified by alleging the detainees were recidivists and undisciplined.
In Bangui male and female detainees were separated; however, this was reportedly not the case in jails and temporary detention facilities in the countryside. There were no separate detention facilities for juvenile detainees, who routinely were housed with adults and often subjected to physical abuse. Arrestees without birth documentation were often treated as adults if they were not clearly minors. One UN inspection team in Bouar was approached by detainees who claimed to be as young as 14 years old.
According to a June report by the UN Secretary-General to the UN Security Council, escapes by detainees, including incarcerated members of the armed forces, had become prevalent, critically affecting the fight against impunity. In many prisons cells had no doors and detainees had little oversight.
The government on occasion restricted prison visits by human rights observers. Although international observers were not entirely denied visits, the government sometimes delayed responses to visit requests, often for weeks or months. The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and religious groups routinely provided supplies, food, and clothes to prisoners. The ICRC had unrestricted access to prisoners; however, access for some other observers was at times limited to certain areas of a given facility. During the year the Ministries of Justice, Public Security, and Defense signed a joint agreement with the ICRC to allow routine access to prisons throughout the country.
Authorities granted the Human Rights Unit of the UN’s Integrated Office in the Central African Republic (BINUCA) and humanitarian NGOs limited access to prisoners and detainees, although bureaucratic requirements for visits and delays significantly restricted the frequency of access during the year.