Mazabuka Prison

Some opportunities happen by chance and the visit to the Mazabuka prison was one of these occasions. I have been to the prison a number of times before to speak to some of the officers about HIV but the chats had always been outside, away from the prisoners. This time we were on the inside, amongst the prisoners, unexpectedly part of a delegation going to inspect the prison conditions. The team included the new DC, the Mayor and various other Government officials. We had only gone to speak to the DC about him opening a HIV workshop and ended up in the back of his vehicle being driven to the prison. Nothing wrong with this given the importance of needing to address HIV issues to both prison officers and prisoners.

The Mazabuka prison currently has around 250 male prisoners (a mixture of people on remand and people already convicted and serving a sentence), who share only two toilets and are expected to sleep in two rooms which are the size of your average school classroom. By my calculations the prisoners outnumbered the mattresses (not beds) by around 6 or 7 to 1, so people have to sleep on the floor, in any space or gap they can find, and sometimes in shifts. With no fans and few windows the rooms have little ventilation and only hot, static air,especially in the current hot conditions. The kitchen walls and ceiling was black; burnt out due to the fires made using small metal braziers to cook food. I am sure that conditions are worse in the larger city prisons but from what I saw even the one in Mazabuka should act as a strong deterrent to crime.