While some prisons are actually quite nice with televisions, work out rooms, ping pong tables, and hearty servings of food, there are numerous prisons (primarily in underdeveloped nations) that are very rightfully called “hell on Earth”. Of course, there are those of you who will say, the prisoners should have thought twice before committing a crime. Fair enough, but remember…most of the worst prisons in the world are not in democratic, fair trial countries. If you scroll down to number 1 we can guarantee you that a disproportionate number of people in that place are there for simply trying to put food on the table.
10- Alcatraz, San Francisco, California
‘The Rock’ or ‘Devil’s Island’ is a prison hell that was built in the 1920s and was designed in such a way that escape was improbable. As the inmates lost contact with the outside world, they were subjected to abusive and arrogant guards who imposed complete silence as prisoners were not only disallowed to converse with each other, but to show their emotions as well.
9- Gitarama Central Prison, Rwanda
Described as hell on earth, all prisoners were doomed to eat, sleep, live, rot, and die squeezed together with four men per square yard in the roofless brick box called the Gitarama Prison. Designed to house 400 people, the population boomed to 7,000 in the mid-1990s in the wake of the Rwandan genocide, and prisoners were left for dead there. Amidst dysentery and despair, prisoners stand cramped together under all weather conditions, choking on the smoke of cooking fires, and suffering from gangrene. They even resorted to eating each other’s flesh out of sheer desperation.
8- Diyarbakır Prison, Turkey
The world’s most sadistic and forbidding penal institution has been referred to as having the greatest number of human rights violations per prisoner. Known for a great number of instances of physical and mental torture, it also gained notoriety for its unlivable conditions, sexual abuse of inmates, and for incarcerating even children for life. To escape their situations, inmates attempted hunger strikes, committed suicide, and even set themselves on fire.
7- ADX Florence Supermax Prison, Colorado
This maximum security prison was built in response to the attacks committed against the guards and staff of other prisons in America. Since prisoners are isolated from the staff and they cannot go anywhere, inmates suffer from psychological torture, leading some to commit suicide.
6- El Rodeo, Guatire, Venezuela
During the presidency of Hugo Chavez, crime rates soared and overcrowded the Venezuelan prisons with 50,000 prisoners, two-thirds of which were still awaiting sentencing. On June 12, 2011, a visitor day at El Rodeo erupted into a bloodbath between rival gangs and resulted in a siege that lasted for an entire month.
5- La Sabaneta, Venezuela
In one of the most brutal penal facilities in South America, violence is a daily occurrence. Besides being at the mercy of diseases, insufficient food and care, little to no medical services, and underpaid staff, inmates were also left to their own devices as they fashion weapons to kill one another.
4- Bang Kwang Prison, Thailand
The ‘Bangkok Hilton’ housed the ‘napinya chained’ inmates, many of whom went crazy due to the stress of the first month in detention. The most violent prison in all of Thailand houses many foreign prisoners and handles death row inmates. It is known for being overcrowded, understaffed, and having deplorable living conditions.
3- Tadmor Military Prison, Syria
Dubbed by Amnesty International as the most oppressive prison in the world with every aspect of it designed to dehumanize its populace, it became more infamous in June 1980 when President Hafez al-Assad ordered the killings of all prisoners as retaliation for the attempted assassination on his life by the Muslim Brotherhood. The clean-up massacre that lasted for 2 weeks killed some 800 to 2,400 inmates.
2- Carandiru Prison, Brazil
The site of the Carandiru Tragedy in 1992, where riots triggered the mass execution of inmates by the guards, became notorious for having an insanely high body count of 1,300 deaths in the course of its 46 years in history. It was closed down in 2002 due to the campaigns of Amnesty International amidst reports of gross human rights violations that the Brazilian government could not answer for.
1- Camp 22, North Korea
The notorious Hoeryong Concentration Camp, which has gained international attention in 2012 after its warden defected to China, was an isolated prison for political prisoners and has been in operation since 1965. A large compound that holds 50,000 prisoners, it was claimed that three generations of dissident families have been imprisoned there to completely remove the ‘roots.’ In addition, the death camp has subjected inmates to extreme torture and human experimentation where they become lab rats for biological weapons like anthrax, bomb testing, and other brutalities.
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