By Saman­tha Dia­mond, MPH Can­di­date Yale University

The begin­nings of the prison started by the gov­ern­ment of Haiti in 2008 and aban­doned one year later.

Arriv­ing in Hinche, I was struck by the sud­den tran­si­tion from rocky ter­rain to cob­ble­stone streets.  The rel­a­tive wealth made the prison con­di­tions seem all the more inhu­mane.  After a mil­i­tary inva­sion in Feb­ru­ary 2004, the prison of Hinche was set on fire and pillaged.

The gov­ern­ment of Haiti began con­struc­tion on a new prison in 2008. This prison was built to have 16 cells with 8 pris­on­ers per cell.

Though I had watched the New Media Advo­cacy Project’s video of the BAI’s Prison Project in the Hinche prison, I did not fully grasp the con­di­tions until I felt the 115 degree heat and smelled the stench waft­ing out of a 20x20 foot cell with 67 men crammed inside.  With 6 square feet per per­son, the prison den­sity is five times the Red Cross’ max­i­mum den­sity for emer­gency situations.

TB and HIV/AIDS make pris­on­ers more vul­ner­a­ble to oppor­tunis­tic infec­tions that plague the pris­ons.  The first of a four recent deaths occurred in Feb­ru­ary.  The most recent case was a 27 year old man who was taken to the hos­pi­tal July 3^rd and died the next day. BAI’s on-site lawyer in Hinche, Ouvens Jean Louis, said the 27 year old pris­oner had been on ARVs, but looked mal­nour­ished and by the time he got to the hos­pi­tal, it was clear that he was only there for his last meal.

Because the young man died at the hos­pi­tal, it was not recorded at the prison. Guards still do not know the cause of death.  Accord­ing to Michelle Kar­shan of Health Through Walls, through­out Haiti, prison guards are reluc­tant to send pris­on­ers to hos­pi­tals because of secu­rity con­cerns. As a result, they wait until the last minute and the hos­pi­tals are reluc­tant to take patients who have lit­tle chance of recovery.

With­out the nec­es­sary nutri­tion, ARVs are sig­nif­i­cantly less effec­tive.  In Haiti, pris­on­ers receive two mea­ger meals a day.  Most detainees depend on their rel­a­tives to bring them sup­ple­men­tal food and water.  While food is man­dated by Hait­ian law, there is no reg­u­la­tion for water, despite inter­na­tional stan­dards bind­ing on Haiti.

After pay­ing 80 Hait­ian Dol­lars (US$10) to travel to St. Marc, one 60 year old mother reports that she tried to deliver water for her son, and was asked to pay the guard to deliver the water. Other women report being asked for “sex­ual favors” by guards in order to “ensure” the food or water gets to the right person.

I am over­whelmed try­ing to deter­mine what to report, to whom, and how to approach a sys­tem rid­dled with prob­lems.  How­ever, Mario Joseph, BAI’s man­ag­ing attor­ney, is stead­fast and deter­mined to change the sys­tem. Recently, BAI on-site lawyer, Baze­lais Thevenot, found that his clients were not receiv­ing food on days they were in court.  Mario vis­ited the prison offi­cials in Mire­bal­ais, St. Marc, and Hinche, to plant the seeds of change. Next week he has an appoint­ment with the regional prison author­ity to cre­ate a sys­tem to feed pris­on­ers at the court house.  Mario aims to “do more than make change at the super­fi­cial level,” or accom­plish an agenda, but instead to “lis­ten, under­stand, and respond” to needs through a victim-centered approach.

Mario Joseph, BAI’s man­ag­ing attor­ney, talk­ing to some peo­ple near his home town.

BAI, IJDH, and Part­ners in Health, along with the FXB Cen­ter and Part­ners in Health, are work­ing together on the Health and Human Rights Prison Project to address the needs of detainees.  This project aims to meet the imme­di­ate med­ical needs of detainees, but also to address the legal causes of these symp­toms of over­crowd­ing by advo­cat­ing against pro­longed pre­trial detention.