Top 10 Dangerous Prisons In The World

Since the 17th century, people, even orphans, have been imprisoned as a form of criminal punishment for minor offenses or to await trial. However, according to scholar Ashley Rubin, those "prisons" were not places where people were punished but rather more like today's jails or penitentiaries.

Just after the American Revolution, three of the first state prisons in the world opened in the United States: in 1785 in Massachusetts, 1790 in Connecticut, and 1794 in Pennsylvania. At the same time, there was a desire to reform the jails because they were so full of fights, corruption, and disease. According to Rubin's JSTOR essay, this thinking allowed for what "paved the way for prisons as we now know them."

Today, prisons vary greatly in size and living conditions, often in relation to the criminals they house. Least security penitentiaries in the US and abroad could have agreeable beds, admittance to private washrooms, and sporting and restoration programs. The wealthy and famous in the United States may even have the opportunity to serve their sentences in facilities that have been upgraded with flat-screen televisions and other creature comforts. This is a controversial pay-to-play opportunity to ensure that the wealthy and famous are as comfortable as possible while they serve their debts to society.

However, there are also prisons on the other side of that spectrum; They are extremely crowded, do not provide adequate medical care, and pose a significant threat to the people who live there. In no particular order, 10 of those are highlighted on this list.

10 most dangerous prisons in the world 
 

• Black Dolphin Prison, Russia
• Kamiti Maximum Security Prison, Kenya
• Terre Haute, U.S.A.
• San Quentin State Prison, U.S.A.
• Diyarbakir Prison, Turkey
• Mendoza Prison, Argentina
• Gldani Prison, Georgia
• United States Penitentiary, Administrative Maximum Facility (ADX), USA
• Camp 14 Kacheon, North Korea
• Gitarama Prison, Rwanda
   

10. Black Dolphin Prison, Russia

Russia's Black Dolphin Prison, also known as "Penal Colony No. 6) is close to Kazakhstan's border with Russia. It is reserved for the nation's most dangerous and violent convicted criminals, such as Chechen terrorists, serial killers, cannibals, and pedophiles. It gets its name from the inmates' dolphin sculpture that stands on the grass in front of the prison reception. Video surveillance keeps an eye on inmates around the clock, and guards make rounds every 15 minutes. Each 50-square-foot (4.6-meter) cell has two inmates assigned to it, and it is protected from guards and other inmates by three sets of steel doors. In a barren concrete exercise yard, inmates are only permitted to leave their cells for 90 minutes each day. They are bound, blindfolded, and forced to walk bent over if they are moved anywhere in the prison, making it impossible for them to learn the layout, interact with other inmates, or overpower the guards. It is thought that Black Dolphin are the only ones who use this method.

9. Kamiti Maximum Security Prison

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Kamiti Maximum Security Prison Roysambu Constituency, Kenya Kenya's prisons are known for their harsh conditions, and Kamiti Maximum Security Prison, which is in Roysambu Constituency, is widely considered to be the worst. It was constructed by the British in 1954 and modeled after a traditional colonial system to house criminals during the October 1952 declaration of a state of emergency. Even though the last person to be executed there was in 1987, Kamiti still has its original gallows. The prison's official capacity is 1,200, but reports indicate that between 1,800 and 2,500 inmates are crammed inside, making it notoriously overcrowded and filthy. There are a lot of serious health problems, like dysentery, gonorrhea, syphilis, tuberculosis, and HIV/AIDS. However Kamiti was at that point notable for lodging political detainees and executions by hanging, its shame filled in 2008, when an uproar started by a booty search was caught on cellphone and displayed on TV. It also remade headlines in 2021 when three people convicted of terrorism fled. Later, seven wardens were detained for aiding in their escape.

8. Terre Haute, Indiana, USA

This Indiana prison complex has units with maximum, medium, and low security. Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the Boston bomber who lives in Terre Haute and is on death row there, has earned the nickname "Guantanamo North." Terre Haute is where the federal government's execution chamber is.) In 2008, the ACLU said that Terre Haute's special confinement unit, where death row inmates are held, had "grossly inadequate" conditions. It claimed that the prisoners were deprived of sleep due to excessive noise and that the prison was denying them medical care and mental health services. In the federal prison system, Terre Haute had the highest number of COVID-19 cases in January 2021, including death row inmates. Since U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland announced that the Department of Justice would review its policy on capital punishment on July 1, 2021, federal executions at Terre Haute have been suspended. This was after the Trump administration carried out 13 federal executions just a few months before Trump's term ended, including the lethal injection execution of Lisa Montgomery on January 12, 2021. Montgomery was America's first woman to be executed in 67 years. Dylann Roof, who was sentenced to death for federal hate crimes for killing nine churchgoers in Charleston, South Carolina, in 2015, is one of 46 men still awaiting execution at Terra Haute.

7. San Quentin State Prison, U.S.A.

San Quentin, the oldest prison in California, is well-known for its 

violence. It has been the home of numerous notorious criminals, including Scott Peterson, Charles Manson, and Sirhan Sirhan, who killed Robert F. Kennedy. It housed California's sole gas chamber and the state's only death row facility for more than 700 inmates (the largest facility in the United States). However, three years after the California governor ended executions in the state, the state began the process of closing the death row and moving inmates. San Quentin developed a reputation over time, particularly in the 1960s and 1970s, when the guards encouraged interracial riots and corruption.

6. Diyarbakir Prison, Turkey

Turkey's Diyarbakir Prison The Ministry of Justice in Turkey constructed Diyarbakir Prison in 1980. Diyarbakir became a military prison under martial law following the Turkish coup d'état on September 12, 1980, where the Kurds were frequently subjected to torture in order to be forced to assimilate. After the September coup, 650,000 people were held, and the majority of them were beaten or tortured. Over 500 people perished, many of whom were in Diyarbakir. Prisoners were subjected to appalling acts of systematic torture during "the period of barbarity," which refers to the early and mid-1980s when Diyarbakr was newly constructed. Hundreds of testimonies from former Diyarbakir inmates have described both physical and mental abuse, though superiors rarely confirm it; deprivation of sleep, senses, water, and food; "Palestinian hangings" (arms hanging); executions fictive; genital electric shocks; healthy teeth and nails extracted; rape or imminent rape; even worse. The rise of the Kurdistan Workers' Party, or PKK, which continues to oppose the Turkish state, was fueled by these abuses of Kurdish prisoners. Diyarbakir is still a functioning prison today, and it is well-known for the high rate of human rights violations per inmate. However, to mixed reviews, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoan announced in 2021 that it would be transformed into a cultural center.

5. Mendoza Prison, Argentina Mendoza

Prison in Argentina is severely overcrowded with a population roughly three times its capacity. Upwards of five detainees are packed into cells that action just 43 square feet (4 square meters), and many prisoners are compelled to rest on the floor without beddings. "People imprisoned in Mendoza are in such a desperate situation that they have gone as far as to sew their mouths up in demand of better living conditions," Amnesty International reported on the conditions in 2005. At that time, the conditions were so bad that inmates sometimes died or were tortured. In the absence of a proper sewage system and inadequate medical care for inmates, inmates were forced to use plastic bottles and bags as toiletries.

4. Gldani Prison, Georgia

A scandal at Gldani Prison in Tbilisi, Georgia, in 2012 brought the country's practice of guards torturing prisoners to death to international attention. A 35-year-old former prison guard who became a whistleblower captured numerous abuses, including rape and assault, on video. The videos sparked massive protests all over the country and actually led to changes in the treatment of inmates there. Even though conditions in the country's prisons have improved over the past decade, Gldani Prison is once again in the news because of the protests that were started by Mikheil Saakashvili's imprisonment. Despite the fact that various protest groups support and oppose Saakashvili's release, the situation is highlighting the facility's notoriety and reputation.

3. United States Penitentiary, Administrative Maximum Facility (ADX), USA

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The United States Penitentiary, Administrative Maximum Facility (ADX), also known as the Alcatraz of the Rockies, Florence ADX, Supermax, or the United States Penitentiary, is the highest-security prison in the country. This 1994-built facility houses some of the most dangerous criminals in the world, including Ted Kaczynski, also known as the Unabomber, Ramzi Yousef, who was responsible for the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, and Zacarias Moussaoui, who was involved in the attacks on the World Trade Center. In their 7-by-12-foot (3.6-meter) concrete cells, inmates at this facility spend 23 hours a day in solitary confinement. Prisoners access their meals through tiny slots in the metal doors of their cells, which have no windows. During the one-hour recreation period, prisoners are escorted to a small outdoor cage by multiple guards and restrained in a variety of ways. Former warden Robert Hood once referred to the prison as "a clean version of hell."

2. Camp 14 Kacheon, North Korea

Camp 14 Kacheon, North Korea Camp 14 Kacheon is a 60-square-mile (155-kilometer) prison located in the middle of North Korea. Camp 14, about 40 miles (64 kilometers) north of Pyongyang, was constructed in 1959, according to reports from the U.S. Department of State. Camp 14 is a political prisoner camp with a capacity of 15,000 inmates. This indicates that they are incarcerated for life for being "enemies of the state." Inmates are frequently starved and forced into farming, mining, and textiles as slaves. Additionally, Camp 14 has a policy known as "three generations of punishment," which means that a lot of inmates are sent there because they are related to someone who is suspected of committing a crime, and it is likely that they will die there without ever committing a crime of their own.

1. Gitarama Prison, Rwanda

Gitarama Prison, Rwanda, is the world's busiest prison. In a building designed to hold just 400 people, Gitarama houses more than 7,000 inmates. The majority of inmates are thought to be involved in the 1994 Rwandan genocide. The men and women who are housed here are compelled to walk barefoot on the filthy ground at all hours of the day because of the extreme overcrowding, which causes their feet to rot. The majority of prisoners are unable to receive the necessary treatment because there is only one full-time doctor assigned to the prison, which results in half a dozen deaths per day. Many eventually require amputations.