Ten worst prisons in history

 

A Prison is everyone’s worse nightmare because of its restrictions and poor living conditions. But did you know some prisons are worse than others in welfare and living conditions. 

These are properly researched prisons and what makes them the worse throughout history.

10. Protest Prison

 From 1949 until 1951, this Stalinist Romanian prison was home to an infamous experiment known as the protest experiment, according to Open Democracy. This quote unquote experiment was actually started by inmates of the prison itself who had previously been jailed as anti-communist fascists. They formed the DCC or the Organization of Prisoners with Communist convictions and went about reeducating other inmates in the most horrifying ways possible. This included torturing other inmates by making them stare at light bulbs, making them repeatedly headbutt each other and even electrocution.

 They were also kept in squalid conditions on purpose and forced to perform humiliating tasks such as baptisms involving sewage. This would then psychologically break  other prisoners into joining the ODC and renouncing their anti-communist tendencies. It’s worth noting, too, that this was fully supported by the director of the president himself. This brutality was eventually stopped in 1952 after a regime shift in the country. But by that point, over 700 prisoners had been through the horrific process, 30 of whom died. 

9.   The Marmaton Prison Italy 

 labelling Italy’s Marmaton as a prison is a bit of a misnomer, really, as it was more  similar to a hybrid of a 12 foot deep underground dungeon and a sewage system built in the seventh century B.C.

 The Marmaton was essentially too dark, dank cells stacked on top of each other. There was no natural light due to them being subterranean. In fact, the only way to get out or into the lowest cell was via a hole in the ground of the upper one. So Loste, an ancient historian, described it as having a fearsome darkness and stench.

 Prisoners were often put into the lower chamber before execution. Failing that, they just left them  there to rot and starve. It’s worth reminding, too, that this complex was built within a sewage system. Legend has it that Saints Pizza and Paul were actually held there but did not die as they were later crucified. For this reason, it’s part of various pilgrimages since it’s been converted into a church memorializing the abject horror the prisoners of the Marmaton went through. 

8. Arga Prison, Mongolia in 1916

 Naturalist Roy Chapman Andrews, future director of the American Museum of Natural History, traveled across Asia. He documented his experiences in his book Across Mongolian Plains in 1921, during which he mentions witnessing a prison he described as one of the worst in the world and not to mentioned seeing rooms full of coffins that were four feet long and two feet wide inside a prison in Erga, Mongolia.

 Andrews explains that it was these tombs that were the prisoner’s cells which were designed so that the prisoners could not fully lay down or sit up comfortably. There was just  a six inch wide hole in the coffins where they’d given food. That is the quote. And if they remember to give the money, the prisoners were also handcuffed and their limbs would shrivel away due to lack of use. 

While the length of stay in these caskets varied and would often be used purely to hold prisoners before they were executed. Many of those incarcerated here, unsurprisingly, died in this horrific captivity. 

7.  Camp Sumter Military Prison Georgia

 Created during the American Civil War in February of 1864. Camp Sumter military prison was the largest Confederate prison in the whole conflict. Also known as Andersonville, Camp Sumter was built to hold 10000 people, but held over 30000, which gives you a hint of the problems it faced. 

The prison was supposed to be built rapidly, but the price of lumber was huge and inflated at the time, which meant it was never fully built properly as a result because there were no barracks to keep them in. Instead, the prisoners were open to the elements almost all of the time. Some of them had shanties made of blankets  and bits of wood, whereas others dug holes in the ground to themselves. The camp was built around a creek with water running through it.

 However, this was soon contaminated with sewage, making the prisoners extremely vulnerable to disease. There was also very little in the way of food due to the Confederates losing supplies and what food they had was of extremely low quality with next to no proper preparation. By the time the prison was closed at the end of the war, 13000 inmates had died as a result of these conditions and its commander and reverse was executed for their murder. 

6. Carandiru Penitentiary

 Over 7000 inmates lived within the walls of Brazil’s Carandiru Penitentiary, whereas there was only space for a third that number. As a result, there was one guard per every hundred prisoners. So things were bound to go wrong as soon as the prisoners arrived. They are told that they need to rent their cells. Even those lucky enough to have left the president still apparently owed back payments for this. 

They actually attempted to have a fair bit of freedom and control. And could get whatever they want within the prison through illicit means, including mobile phones. There’s even a prison within the prison called the yellow, as those inside rarely see sunlight. However, it’s most famous for the results of a riot. After a game of soccer, 300 police officers stormed the jail and killed over 100 prisoners. Allegedly, this included prisoners who had surrendered or were trying to hide, often at close range.

 In 2014, 73 of the police officers were convicted, some of whom were sentenced to 156 years in jail. The president was later demolished. In 2002..

 5. Devil’s Island

 10 miles off the coast of French Guiana, lay one of the deadliest, the most notorious jails in the whole of the French penal colony, Villedieu, Diabaly or Devil’s Island, initially used as a leper colony. Soon, political prisoners were sent to the island, too, during its use between 1852 and 1953. The prison was pretty much the only building on the whole island, surrounded by shark infested waters, which were often the downfall of any seafaring would be escapees.

 The convicts were forced to provide labor in all conditions while shackled. Some were even exposed to the elements all of the time, with no roof on their very small cells. 

This meant they were often attacked by animals on the island, too, like vampire bats and rats. Solitary confinement wasn’t much better, though, as that was spent in complete darkness. Devil’s Island saw 80000 prisoners come and go, though the vast majority never got to leave the island, as thousands upon thousands died of various diseases as well as the poor diet and labor conditions. To this day, the general public can visit other islands in the former penal colony. But venturing to Devil’s Island is strictly taboo.

4. The HMS Jersey (The prison Ship)

 its late 18th century in America at the height of the war for independence against the British who were occupying New York City at the time, prisoners of war or rebels had to be imprisoned by the British somewhere as they numbered by the thousands. So the British used warships that were docked at shore to keep them on as prison ships. The worst of these was the ship nicknamed How the HMS Jersey. It transpires that name is horrifyingly suitable. 

This ship kept more than 1000 prisoners on board where they were tortured, starved and exposed to a deadly combination of diseases. This ship was meant for 400 sailors. The prisoners had nowhere to even sit or lie down, since the vast majority  of them were kept below deck. There was no sunlight and very little ventilation in the summer. It was deathly warm in the winter, unspeakably cold. 

Those on board the ship were eventually given a choice. One way out was to betray their country and join the British army. But the many thousands that died clearly didn’t take or weren’t even given that choice as the number of people who perished on board the Jersey and other prison ships was almost three times the amount of the patriots who died in armed combat.

3.  How Long prison Vietnam

Nicknamed the Hanoi Hilton during the Vietnam War. How long prison was anything but luxury. A prison camp for American prisoners of war. The conditions at home were low, deteriorated rapidly with the increase of prisoners.

 The Vietnamese government used extreme methods of torture in order to extract military secrets from the US soldiers, including rope, bindings, beatings and solitary confinement. As well as this prisoner’s legs were often strapped into iron stocks that were left  in the French colonial era of the prison. These were so tight that they often cut into the skin, causing lacerations and infection.

 They were also forced to defecate where they lay and left to rot with the rats and cockroaches. Prisoners were rarely fair. The starvation was used as a form of torture, and when they were fed, they were often given watery soups with feces and rocks. George McKnight’s, a six foot two inch US soldier, was forced to lay in a four foot trench with his hands tied behind his back for 34 days as punishment  for trying to escape swallow.

 The Vietnamese government still denies the wrongdoings to these Beaubois. To this very day.

 2. Tadmor Prison Syria 

built by the French in the 1930s. Tashima Prison is located in the heart of the Syrian desert and was the place that Syrian Prime Minister Hafez al-Assad sent thousands of political dissidents to be humiliated, tortured and executed between 1971 and 2000. The prison is best known for the 1980  massacre. 

After a failed attempt at assassinating Assad, members of the Defense Brigade flew to Turmeda and their soldiers went from sale to sell shooting prisoners with machine guns. An Amnesty International report estimates that up to 1000 people were murdered in just minutes, most of which were supporters of the Muslim Brotherhood. 

Their bodies were dumped in mass graves outside the prison cells, had windows covered with barbed wire, and prisoners were under permanent surveillance and not allowed to make eye contact with each other. On arrival, new inmates were thrown a reception party. They were whipped, mercilessly, forced into car tires and beaten some prisoners never even made it through that reception when inmates would cry out for medical help for other dying prisoners, they were told only call us to collect bodies. 

1.   Holmesburg Prison (Philadelphia, USA) 

Holmesburg Prison was opened in 1996 to help relieve overcrowding at the nearby William Mensing prison, much like other entries in [00:10:30:00] this list. This prison was no stranger to torture, corruption and murder. In 1938, over half of the inmates went on hunger strike because the food was that bad. Twenty five of these were identified as leaders of the strike and were taken to a building called the Klondyke, a narrow cellblock lined with radiators and steam pipes, which in the peak of the August heat wave, reached nearly 200 degrees.

Four of these men died with injuries pertaining to severe beatings and being boiled alive. The prison has also been the setting  of many murders, including that of the warden and his deputy in 1973 and a bloody riot in 1970 in which prisoners were armed with meat cleavers and boning knives. During a lawsuit that followed, attention was drawn to the filthy and overcrowded conditions and severe beatings that inmates had to endure. 

As if that wasn’t bad enough, prisoners were also subjected to medical experiments where Dr. Albert Kligman exposed participants to herpes, staphylococcus radioactive isotopes, chemicals to cold skin, blistering psychoactive [drugs and carcinogens. So those were the 10 worst prisons in history. Have we missed any out? Let me know in the comments down below. In the meantime, though, be sure to get this video and like and subscribe to old unattentive. Haven’t done so already. Four great videos, just like the one on screen right now.