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WEEKLY NEWSLETTER
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Ivory Coast
Index
As in most Third World countries, prison conditions in
Côte
d'Ivoire were harsh. Prisons often were crowded, dietary
conditions
were poor, and medical and sanitation facilities were
minimal.
Family members were encouraged to bring food to prisoners
to
supplement the meager prison diets. Prisons served as
punitive and
custodial facilities rather than as rehabilitative
institutions.
Visits by prisoners' attorneys were permitted, but the
vast
majority of inmates could not afford legal assistance. The
few
court-appointed lawyers could not effectively represent
the large
numbers of persons assigned to them. There was virtually
no
vocational training, and although prisoners routinely
performed
labor, like cleaning public markets or maintaining roads,
they did
little or no gainful work. Prison staffs and guard forces
were
small relative to the inmate population, had minimum
education and
professional training, and could scarcely maintain control
of the
inmates and prison facilities. In July 1983, for example,
a group
of armed Burkinabé made a night raid on the large prison
in Bouaké
and freed forty-five of their countrymen.
The prison population in 1966 was 3,754 inmates, of
whom 2,953
had been sentenced and 801 were accused but not yet
convicted or
sentenced. By the early 1970s, the prison population had
increased
sharply to between 5,000 and 7,000 inmates. The two
largest
prisons, at Yopougon near Abidjan and at Bouaké, accounted
for
about one-half the total prison population. The former
facility had
about 1,100 inmates, and the latter had between 1,600 and
2,000.
Ten years later, the number of inmates in the Bouaké
prison was
estimated at 1,400, and by 1985 the total number of
convicted
prisoners in the country had doubled to some 13,000. A
large
proportion (perhaps even a substantial majority) of the
inmates in
Ivoirian penal institutions were expatriate Africans from
neighboring countries. If the 1966 prison population
figures are
representative of a fairly stable ratio of inmates
awaiting
sentence to those actually serving sentences, then Côte
d'Ivoire
compared very favorably with the Third World norm in which
the
majority of prisoners were awaiting trial because of the
judicial
backlog.
Periodically, Houphouët-Boigny granted wholesale
amnesties to
prisoners. For example, in October 1975 he pardoned about
5,000
common law prisoners serving prison terms for embezzlement
and
theft. At the same time, he pardoned many political
prisoners,
including 145 who had been implicated in the Gagnoa
uprising of
1970 and 12 soldiers who had been held since the 1973 coup
plot.
Ten years later, on December 7, 1985, in commemoration of
the
twenty-fifth anniversary of Côte d'Ivoire's independence,
the
president ordered the release of nearly 10,000 of the
country's
prisoners who were not incarcerated for violent crimes or
armed
robbery.
Data as of November 1988
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