Dreadful prison conditions prompt prisoners in Haitian jail to threaten to set it afire. Inmates at the Commissariat of Petit-Goâve jail, to the south west of the Port Au Prince, Haiti, on Friday threatened to set fire to the building if the authorities do not adequately deal with overcrowding and a shortage of food at the penal institution.
The building, which is supposed to house 60 prisoners, now has a population of 224. The angry prisoners speaking on Radio Préférence in Haiti said they are worried about sanitation conditions as well.
“We are hungry, this morning we were given something of poor quality that we refused to eat,” one detainees told the radio station with others warning “if we are not given food, we will set fire.”
The police have stepped up surveillance, but the detainees have described the holding cells as inhuman, with some prisoners seriously ill and need to be hospitalized.
+6They also fear that some of the prisoners carry various diseases including the HIV/AIDS virus.
