Recently, a Miami Herald reporter and photographer were given unusual access to the prisons. Their report follows. In Haiti, there is no capital punishment. But for many inmates, getting thrown in jail is a death sentence. There is no medication at the prison clinic, and little medical care.
Beds are in short supply, and only the inmates with influence get assigned one.
Other patients crawl onto any available space, and that often means a cold cement floor. The men who become too sick to treat are put out in the courtyard, where they die, often alone. Lupien bows his head as he stands in the shade of a tree in the prison's courtyard. A former warden in his native Canada for more than two decades, Lupien is an authority on jails. Since his retirement, he has been working as a consultant, trying to improve jails in Africa and the Caribbean.