ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - Iraq’s prisons are extremely overcrowded, some operating at as much as 300 percent capacity, the spokesperson for the justice ministry told Rudaw English on Friday.
There are some 60,000 prisoners in the country, but capacity is about 25,000 in 28 federal prisons, said spokesperson Kamil Amin. Overcrowding varies from prison to prison, reaching 200 to 300 percent capacity.
“It is difficult to control them,” he said.
Part of the reason for overcrowding is a crackdown on drugs. The US Department of State in its 2022 human rights report cited an unnamed Iraqi official as saying “overcrowding across prisons in general increased during the year, unofficially to approximately 40 percent over capacity, due to law enforcement efforts against drugs in the country, with the thousands of dealers and drug abusers arrested during the year resulting in an increase in prison inmates.”
Some 8,000 inmates were jailed on terror-related charges, according to data provided by Amin.
The Islamic State (ISIS) seized control of a vast swathe Iraqi territory in 2014. During the liberation process, thousands of people were arrested for alleged links to the terror group, especially in Sunni areas like Nineveh province.
A group of lawmakers visited a Nineveh prison in 2019, labelling the conditions there as “tragic” and “catastrophic” due to overcrowding.
Human Rights Watch (HRW) said in the same year that it “documented extreme overcrowding, inhumane conditions, and ill-treatment at three Nineveh pretrial detention facilities.”
“The detainees have no space to lie down or sit comfortably and have no mattresses because there is no room for them in the cells. Lawyers cannot visit their clients, because, among other reasons, there is no space for meetings,” it added.
The Justice Network for Prisoners (JNP), a rights organisation, said in 2020 that there was overcrowding at 73 percent of the sites it visited.
Amin said the justice ministry has several plans to ease overcrowding, including expanding current facilities, building new prisons, and establishing a rehabilitation centre.
