Improving Africa’s Prisons

This policy brief examines the crisis in the prison systems of Sierra Leone, Tanzania, and Zambia, highlighting how colonial-era infrastructure, chronic underfunding, and retributive sentencing policies lead to severe overcrowding and systemic human rights violations.

• Prison systems in Sierra Leone, Tanzania, and Zambia are in crisis, characterized by severe overcrowding and an inability to meet basic human rights standards despite the states' ratification of international protocols.
• Overcrowding has reached critical levels in all three nations: Zambia's prisons operated at 370 per cent of capacity in 2007, Sierra Leone's system functioned at 112 per cent capacity (with Freetown's maximum prison at 400 per cent), and Tanzania faces an acute shortage of facilities, such as in Dar es Salaam where only three prisons serve a population of 3.5 million.
• Chronic underfunding and congestion have led to inhumane living conditions, including inadequate nutrition, poor sanitation, and severe health issues. In Zambia, some prisoners must sleep while standing, while in Sierra Leone, overcrowding has caused health problems such as swollen legs due to lack of exercise.
• Inadequate facilities have resulted in a failure to properly segregate detainees. In Zambia, juveniles have been kept in cells with adults, leading to sexual and other assaults, and most prisons lack separate facilities for women.
• High prison populations are driven not only by sentencing but by judicial delays that increase the number of remand prisoners. In Sierra Leone, some individuals have awaited trial for over five years, and in Tanzania, pre-trial detention can last up to 240 days.
• The use of corporal punishment remains legal in Sierra Leone and Tanzania, which undermines their compliance with international human rights standards.
• While Zambia has a well-elaborated policy for containing HIV in prisons, Sierra Leone's prisons denied hosting HIV-infected prisoners despite the presence of the virus transmitted through sharing syringes, razors, and homosexual acts.

APA

Robins, S. (2009). Improving Africa’s Prisons. Institute for Security Studies. https://issafrica.s3.amazonaws.com/site/uploads/NO9SEP09.PDF

Chicago

Robins, Simon. Improving Africa’s Prisons. Institute for Security Studies, 2009. https://issafrica.s3.amazonaws.com/site/uploads/NO9SEP09.PDF.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |last1=Robins |first1=Simon |title=Improving Africa’s Prisons |publisher=Institute for Security Studies |date=September 2009 |url=https://issafrica.s3.amazonaws.com/site/uploads/NO9SEP09.PDF |access-date=17 August 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{robins2009improving, author = {Robins, Simon}, title = {{Improving Africa’s Prisons}}, institution = {Institute for Security Studies}, year = {2009}, month = sep, url = {https://issafrica.s3.amazonaws.com/site/uploads/NO9SEP09.PDF}, urldate = {2026-08-17}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }