South Sudan: the juvenile prison where life is better on the inside

“Most of our children are in here for committing the crime of stealing food,” says senior probation officer Altaf Hawa Bol. “Many of them are children from other counties. Most of them don’t have families.”

She gestures to the boys kicking a football around the muddy internal courtyard of Wau juvenile detention facility. A group of older boys sit in a corner chatting, eyeing a stick-wielding prison guard nervously. Somewhere in the background a child can be heard screaming.

Altaf continues: “Maybe they went to a restaurant and ordered some food costing one or two [South Sudanese] pounds [11-22p], but they had no money and tried to run away. They got caught by the owner, who brought them to the police. Or maybe they stole a T-shirt from the market. These are the common stories as to how they end up with us.”

The Wau detention centre in Western Bahr el Ghazal state in north-western South Sudan^[1] is the only reformatory facility of its kind in the country. The crammed facility houses 45 boys, aged between 10 and 18. A few are imprisoned for charges of murder or rape. But most are petty criminals serving sentences of less than six months. Almost all have been here more than once.

Related: Ishmael Beah hails South Sudan's former child soldiers as future leaders | Nadene Ghouri^[2]

Adim* is 17 and on his second term. On the first, aged 14, he was convicted of rape and served two years. He says that although his mother is living nearby he doesn’t know where she is or how to find her. On release he found himself living on the streets. The prison has a sole social worker dedicated to family tracing and follow-up care; she has managed to trace and reunite only one inmate with his family. On release Adim stole food to survive and found himself inside again. But he says he really doesn’t mind.

“This is a good place. It’s not like a proper prison where it is very hard to live. It is OK here. I like it. I feel safe.”

Jehanne Henry, senior Africa researcher for Human Rights Watch, says South Sudan’s prisons have long been struggling^[3] (pdf): “The criminal justice system is riddled by insufficiencies and abuse, including the lack of due process in proceedings. It’s a chronic problem.

“Most children wind up in adult jails,” she adds. “I’ve seen children and mentally ill people housed in mixed adult jails in terrible conditions. But if children are going to be detained, there need to be all sorts of safeguards. Sadly, any attempts to improve South Sudan’s criminal justice system have been derailed by the recent conflict.”

Adim shares a dormitory room with the older boys; the 10- to 14-year-olds share another. Altaf explains: “We only have these two rooms, so we have to treat them all [the same]. We don’t differentiate [between] the murder, the rape – they are all children and we talk to them in the same way. Our youngest inmate is just 10 and he is here for murder. He killed a younger boy in a fight but he doesn’t even know what he did. The first time he came here he was running about without a care, because he doesn’t know what he did wrong.”

David* is 11. His family fled fighting in neighbouring Unity state and came to Western Bahr el Ghazal. Then both his parents died.

“I met a man who told me to ask the chief for help,” he says. “The chief let me stay there for three nights. Then the man told me where the chief kept his money and said I should steal it for him. I took 20,000 pounds [£2,250]. I gave it to the man and he gave me 500 pounds.” Both of them were caught and David was sentenced to four months’ detention.

Related: Food rations bring respite to South Sudanese forced to live in swamps | Simona Foltyn^[4]

Western Bahr el Ghazal has a high number of internally displaced people who have fled fighting in neighbouring states. Many of them are lone children like David. Shadrach Maper Adong, a Unicef programme officer based in Warrap, says: “We know it is a big problem and we see these street children everywhere, but we don’t know exactly how many there are. We are trying to find out and see if we can better support them.”

The juvenile facility is certainly better than South Sudan’s overcrowded adult prisons, where disease and hunger are rife. But it is still extremely basic. A stench of sewage permeates the air, food provision is generally two bowls of rice a day, supplemented by milk and porridge supplied by the Red Cross. It has also provided mosquito nets for the iron beds and access to medical care.

There is a brick school building on site stocked with books provided by Unicef, but it’s currently used as a pre-school for the children of the prison staff. The prisoners receive no education. The governor says he is waiting for official registration to open the school, and that the central government needs to provide teachers and pay their salaries. The only activities are twice weekly football coaching – part of a right-to-play scheme – and visits to a nearby prison garden, where inmates are taught to grow vegetables.

This frustrates Altaf. “My hope is to point them towards an interest in learning. I want them to leave here and to want to go back to school. But to do that we need teachers, and we need a workshop so we can do things like mechanic or carpentry training.

“I tell them to leave the stealing and fighting behind when they get out. But we have no means of controlling them outside of here. They receive no support so, of course, they will come back again. Here at least they have food and drink. We know some of them go straight out and commit a crime, just so they can come back. Of course we discourage it, but what can we do?”

She places a maternal arm around Adim’s shoulders. “When you leave here, prepare seeds to get money. If you want clothes, you must buy clothes. If you work for yourself, you will succeed. But if you want to steal, that’s not a way of living. You will be 18 next. Your time here is over.”

*Names have been changed to protect identities

References

1. ^{^} South Sudan (www.theguardian.com)
2. ^{^} Ishmael Beah hails South Sudan's former child soldiers as future leaders | Nadene Ghouri (www.theguardian.com)
3. ^{^} South Sudan’s prisons have long been struggling (www.hrw.org)
4. ^{^} Food rations bring respite to South Sudanese forced to live in swamps | Simona Foltyn (www.theguardian.com)