Women in prisons are enduring a daily nightmare of abuse, neglect, and despair, a new study has revealed.
It amplifies pleas for dignity and humane treatment.
“They treat us like we’re nothing,” one inmate confessed. “We’re shouted at, humiliated and made to feel like trash every single day.”
Titled Narratives of Incarcerated Women in a Prison, the study was published on January 9 2025 on United States-based BioMed Central (BMC) Women’s Health journal website.
Conducted by researchers from Mzuzu University, Livingstonia University and Dublin University in Ireland, it reveals collective punishments for a mistake by one.
“When one person breaks a rule, we all pay the price,” explained one inmate in the study done at an undisclosed prison located in an urban area in the Central Region.
“They make us kneel the whole day. By the end of it, our knees are swollen and bruised,” another inmate said.
Other punishments are bizarre and degrading.
“They pour water on the ground and force us to roll in the mud under their watchful eyes. We spend hours like this, bruised and filthy,” another prisoner recounted.
Even routine tasks are turned into ordeals as prison wardens reportedly command inmates to perform “frog jumps” across large distances.
“The next day, we can’t even walk because our legs are covered in sores,” one woman shared.
Basic necessities such as water are in woefully short supply, turning daily survival into a bitter struggle.
“We have one tap for 30 women and sometimes it runs dry,” said one inmate. “Everyone fights just to get enough water to wash or clean the toilets.”
Such shortages fuel tensions, leading to fights among the inmates.
“Imagine fighting your fellow prisoners for water—just to bathe. It’s humiliating,” another added.
The physical hardships are compounded by a prison culture of verbal abuse and humiliation by prison wardens.
“They scream at us, saying, ‘This is prison life! What do you expect?’ It hurts so much,” one woman admitted.
The psychological toll of such treatment drives some inmates to the brink of despair.
“There are days I cry from morning to night. Sometimes I think of suicide as the only way to escape,” confessed one prisoner.
Another inmate shared a similarly haunting thought.
“Torture has to end somehow. Suicide feels like the quickest way out of this pain,” she said.
The researchers point out that the abuses contradict United Nations standard rules for the treatment of incarcerated individuals.
“Regulations clearly state that no person under any form of detention or imprisonment shall be subjected to torture or cruelty, inhuman or degrading treatment, or punishment,” reads the report.
The study says administrators at the prison authorised the interviews with the prisoners.
“The study used four criteria for data trustworthiness: credibility, dependability, confirmability and transferability.
“Peer debriefing and member checking were employed to promote credibility, manage interviewer bias, and ensure conceptual clarity during data analysis and manuscript writing,” the researchers write.
