Boys in Jail

There's not much to say about the over crowded conditions. I'll let the photos speak for themselves.

I don't speak Creole, and can only understand a little French, but I speak Spanish and one of the boys had a Dominican father, so he spoke a little Spanish too. He told me the boys in his cell had been there any where between 4 months and 5 days. They had no idea how long they would be held, nor did he admit to any understanding of why he was in the prison.

One of the most sobering bits of information was a young boy who told us he wanted to get out because he didn't know how his "child" was doing. I can only hope he was referring to a sibling, but my limited French couldn't get clarification.

These pictures were taken on the morning of Tuesday, June 10, 2008. The boys agreed to our snapping the pictures.

More pictures of the campus

Here are two additional pictures from outside.

In the first you can see the relative size of the cells. The size of one of the cells is the area which is painted white. It holds about 50 boys.

The second picture below was taken from the back corner of the yard looking towards the only exit/entrance where the guards are standing. There are about 200 boys in this facility.

How we got in...

Felix Jimenez who is a Sargent with Miami-Dade County Police introduced himself to the officer in charge and we were allowed to do pretty much whatever we wanted.

There were apparently some children taking tests so the guards didn't want to let the boys out because it would be disruptive to the testing process, so we went inside the cell block and shared with them there.

Here is a picture of Felix with three of the guards.

Yard

Here is a picture inside the small campus standing at the back of the play yard looking towards the entrance of the cell block.

From what we could tell, the guards were patient and kind towards the children but it seems the children had very limited time out in the yard. When we arrived there was a large TV that was playing inside the door in the photo. None of the children could actually see the TV, but they could all hear it from within the 4 cells located within. You can see some of the children through the bars to the right of the picture.

Located directly behind the entrance was the bathroom facility. I didn't actually get a look inside there, but it seemed clean.

Boys Prison

June 19, 2008
Last week I spent an amazing week in Haiti with a number of other people. We spent most of our time in construction and in food distribution.

However we had an opportunity to visit a Boys Prison in Port-Au-Prince on Tuesday, June 10, 2008. The prison is not for boys that have committed heinous crimes, its for boys who are homeless and without guardians. The stated purpose for the prison is that the boys are better off there than in the dangerous streets of Port-Au-Prince.

I'll let you be the judge with the pictures posted here. Here is a picture of the prison from outside. This building is directly behind the police station. The doorway framed in blue is the entrance to the prison.