NASSAU, Bahamas – Conditions at the Bahamas’ only prison are overcrowded and grim, with some inmates in maximum security lacking toilets and kitchen facilities, Amnesty International said in a preliminary report Friday.
Researchers from the London-based human rights group spent two days this week at Her Majesty’s Fox Hill Prison, in Nassau, and will release a full report on the prison compound sometime in three to five months, Amnesty said.
The prison, built in the 1950s, has long been criticized for being overcrowded. It has room for about 400 inmates, but is housing about 1,300, almost half of whom are pretrial inmates.
A new jail house for 300 pretrial detainees is due to open at the end of the month, and will be a “dramatic leap forward,” said Prof. Rod Morgan, a prison management expert at the University of Bristol in England.
But even with the new jail, located within the Fox Hill compound, the main prison will still be 100 percent overcrowded, said Morgan, who was working with the Amnesty researchers in the Bahamas.
Aside from overcrowding at the prison, Amnesty also complained that maximum security was too confining, keeping inmates in constant lockdown without toilets or adequate kitchen facilities.
The researchers said, however, that Bahamian authorities showed cooperation that was “unprecedented” and a “model” for other countries.
Researchers were allowed full access to the prison inmates, and also visited a detention center for illegal immigrants and police lockups.
Government officials did not immediately comment on the findings.
The Bahamas is a former British Caribbean colony of nearly 300,000 people spread out over more than 700 islands and cays.
