Vera Institute of Justice

Overview

There are now twice as many inmates in Haiti's prisons than in 1995, and nearly eighty percent of them have not even been charged. With support from the Open Society Insitute and the United Nations Development Program, Vera assembled a team of researchers to revisit Haiti's often-studied but never-solved problem of prolonged pretrial detention and the related issue of poor prison conditions. This research shows that the situation is especially dire around the capital, Port-au-Prince, compared to provincial jurisdictions where limited training and procedural reforms have yielded some benefits. This report reviews the previous initiatives, identifies causes of persisitent problems, and recommends incremental reforms, immediate and long-range, for the Ministry of Justice and related government agencies.