Starvation rations: Inmates are dying inside Haiti’s overcrowded prisons from lack of food

Inmates in Haiti’s overcrowded prison system are being subjected to a starvation-level diet, putting them substantially at risk for malnutrition and even death, a new University of Florida study says.

The study found that among 1,060 men incarcerated across two Haitian prisons — the severely overcrowded National Penitentiary in Port-au-Prince and the smaller but also overcrowded prison in the city of Mirebalais in the Central Plateau — the mean number of calories the inmates were getting per day was 571. The level is consistent with starvation levels, the study released on Tuesday found.

Making matters worse, said Arch G. Mainous III, the study’s lead author, is that the number of calories consumed per day showed a statistically significant decrease between when researchers first started the study and then did a follow-up months later.

“When you start looking at three to four million people in the country [who do not have enough to eat], and are looking toward potentially starvation level diets, prisoners are really kind of a low priority,” said Mainous. “If there’s food that’s going to be given out, the prisons is not where scarce resources are going to be sent.”

The research comes as an increasing number of inmates in Haiti’s overcrowded prisons die as a result of a lack of food, water and medication. Between January and April, the United Nations Security Council documented 54 prison deaths related to malnutrition. More inmates have died since then, with a lack of food cited as the cause, along with COVID-19 and cholera.

“For four years there has not been enough food for prisoners,” said Marie Yolène Gilles, who closely monitors Haiti’s prisons as director of the human rights group Fondasyon Je Klere, or Eyes Wide Open Foundation. “Furthermore, the [required] menu of the National Prison Administration is not respected nor the requirements that prisoners be fed twice a day, given recreation, medication and health services. … That is why a lot of prisoners are sick, malnourished and dying in prisons.”

Gilles said in instances where food is provided, it is often sold to prison cooks who then turn around and resell it to inmates.

“It’s generalized corruption,” she said. “They don’t eat meat and sometimes just eat dry rice. … They can go three days without food and when there is food, there is no fuel to cook it, so how much do you expect a prisoner to weigh under these circumstances?”

The UF study found there is no specific serving size and prisoners ate what could fit in little plastic buckets, or in jars they brought with them to collect their meals, and fruits and vegetables beyond dried beans were essentially nonexistent. As a result, prisoners are susceptible to diseases caused by nutritional deficiencies, like scurvy and beriberi, both of which have worsened in many Haitian prisons.

“More than 75% of the men had a daily diet that put them at risk of both scurvy (lack of Vitamin C) and beriberi (lack of Vitamin B1). These observations suggest that persons incarcerated at both the Penitencier National and Mirebalais were not receiving enough food to support a healthy diet and what they were receiving was not appropriate nutrition,” the UF study said. “These results suggest an extremely high risk of poor health outcomes for those living within the prisons.”

Mainous said researchers launched the study hoping to improve the diet in the country’s prisons. They thought that they could help by educating the prison wardens and cooks about nutrition and food substitutes to help the vulnerable population by getting them “to do something, to make it more nutritious.”

But the intervention wasn’t successful.

“We found out that they … they didn’t get very much of it,” he said about food deliveries. “We were sort of very surprised, and shocked to see that they were even at starvation level; less than starvation levels at times.”

Researchers also assumed that prison cooks had more input and more influence in planning meals and determining the ingredients in the dishes they prepared. But they learned that also wasn’t the case.

Researchers found that the lack of nutrition was not the result of a lack of education, but is a systemic problem in terms of how prisons buy food for inmates and how decisions are made about what is delivered to be cooked. It has all been made worse by the country’s ongoing political instability and violence, the study found, citing incidents where prisoners were on lockdown and went days without food as a result.

Also, many prisoners depend on family members to provide them with food, but given the worsening violence, those who previously visited the prison and provided nutritional assistance are unable to travel, researchers found.

Mainous said researchers are looking at solutions, one of which would link inmates with prison farms to get more food. But he acknowledges that while it may help address the incarcerated prison population in the rural communities, it doesn’t address those in the city like at the National Penitentiary.

If Haiti is to make a dent in the health of those incarcerated, it is important that prison cooks have sufficient food for inmate and have some ability to choose what they cook, the study concluded.

“Violence and crime in Haitian society and the corresponding context of obtaining food, transporting it, and paying for it in a situation of violence and social chaos requires planners to think creatively and consider how to deal with these significant challenges,” the study said. “If not, educational interventions are unlikely to be successful.”