Cambodia's prisons on track to be world's most overcrowded by 2018

Jul 19, 2010, 5:46 GMT

Phnom Penh - A Cambodian human rights group warned Monday that the country's prisons are on track to become the world's most overcrowded within a decade should the prison population continue to grow at its current rate.

Cambodia's prisons are operating at an average overcapacity of 167 per cent with more than 13,300 prisoners in a system built to take 8,000, said the Cambodian League for the Promotion and Defense of Human Rights, known by its French acronym LICADHO.

'Some of these prisons date back to the early 1900s, and are scarcely fit for habitation,' LICADHO said in its report.

The organization said prisons were already full six years ago, and since then the prison population has grown by 14 per cent a year.

Naly Pilorge, LICADHO's director, said government efforts to build more prisons would not solve the problem of 'dire overcrowding and crumbling infrastructure.'

'The prison population is increasing dramatically each year, and by 2018 we will have the most overcrowding of any country compared to population,' Pilorge said. 'So the government must find and use other solutions that have been used in other countries.'

She said one solution lay in the judiciary imposing non-custodial sentences on some convicts.

And given that 3,800 people, or around 30 per cent of the entire prison population, are in jail awaiting trial, another would be to ensure pre-trial detention was used only in exceptional circumstances.

'We have included other possible solutions including community work instead of sending certain people to prison,' she said.

The report noted the case of the second most-overcrowded prison, which is in Takhmau near Phnom Penh.

It was built four years ago as a model prison with help from the Australian government, but has over three times its planned capacity with 1,042 inmates in a facility designed to take just 314.