The Campaign for Human Rights and Development International (CHRDI) has declared an “unreserved and urgent Human Rights Emergency” in Sierra Leone’s correctional facilities, accusing the government of mass arbitrary detention, preventable custodial deaths and state-sanctioned neglect at two Freetown prisons.
CHRDI said its monitoring mission to the Freetown Male Correctional Centre at Pademba Road and the New England Female Correctional Centre found conditions that breached the country’s constitution and international human rights law.
The group alleged that Pademba Road holds 2,016 male inmates in a facility originally designed for 324 inmates, with more than two-thirds of them awaiting trial. It said 481 detainees are held without formal indictment and 108 cases have been stalled since 2016.
CHRDI also alleged that 20 preventable deaths have been recorded since March 2026, and that 18 inmates with active tuberculosis are held without isolation alongside 48 people living with HIV/AIDS.
At the New England facility, CHRDI said it documented seven nursing infants and toddlers in custody, including three born there, and claimed official records undercount female detainees.
The organisation accused authorities of jailing more than 25 people solely for failing to pay minor fines, and described the re-arrest of a man acquitted by the Supreme Court as a “flagrant subversion of the rule of law.”
CHRDI has demanded an independent audit of all cell blocks and registers, emergency court sessions to review detainee cases, the removal of infants and their mothers from custody, clinical isolation for tuberculosis patients and the release of people held over unpaid fines.
The government has not yet responded to the allegations.
