Luzira Luzira is a suburb of Kampala, the capital of Uganda. It is best known for the country's main prison, Luzira Maximum Security Prison, which has seen significant redevelopment thanks to the work of African Prisons Project, a charity based in the ...

Maximum Security Prison is a

maximum security prison Maximum security prisons and supermax prisons are grades of high security level used by prison A prison, also known as a jail, gaol, penitentiary, detention center, correction center, correctional facility, or remand center, is a facility wher ...

for both men and women in

Uganda Uganda, officially the Republic of Uganda, is a landlocked country in East Africa. It is bordered to the east by Kenya, to the north by South Sudan, to the west by the Democratic Republic of the Congo, to the south-west by Rwanda, and to the ...

. Until Kitalya Maximum Security Prison opened in 2020, Luzira was the only maximum security prison in the country and housed Uganda's death-row inmates.

Location

The prison is in the

neighborhood in

Nakawa Division Nakawa Division is one of the five administrative divisions of the city of Kampala, the capital and largest city of Uganda. The town of Nakawa is the site of the division headquarters. Location Nakawa Division lies in the eastern part of the city ...

in southeastern

Kampala Kampala (, ) is the Capital city, capital and largest city of Uganda. The city proper has a population of 1,875,834 (2024) and is divided into the five political divisions of Kampala Central Division, Kampala, Kawempe Division, Kawempe, Makindy ...

, Uganda's capital and largest city. The prison is approximately south-east of the city's central business district. The coordinates of the prison are 0°17'59.0"N, 32°38'26.0"E (Latitude:0.299735; Longitude:32.640556).

Overview

The prison houses both convicted and sentenced inmates, as well as suspects awaiting trial. It has a male section and female section. It also houses the country death row, amounting to about 500 men and women. A welfare project was carried out by installing windows, lighting, plumbing, furniture, mattresses and linen, as part of the African Prisons Project. The prison has a library of over 7,000 books from the United Kingdom.

Prison management

In Luzira, inmates are assigned more responsibility that would be in similar prisons in the United Kingdom or the United States. Inmates assume responsibility for maintenance of harmony and functionality of the units where they live, including the growing and harvesting of food, its preparation and its distribution within the prison. Learning is encouraged, with many men learning and teaching carpentry skills to others. The guard to prisoner ration in Luzira is about 1:35, compared to 1:15 in the UK. Aggression among inmates is the exception and not the rule. The recidivism rate in Luzira is less than 30 percent, compared with 46 percent in the UK and 76 percent in the United States.

Capacity

The prison was designed with capacity of 1,700 inmates, but often houses close to 8,000. On 27 August 2014, the day of the 2014 national population census, the prison housed 6,336 people; 3, 373 were in the Luzira Upper Prison, 1,495 were in Murchison Bay Prison, and Kampala Remand Prison had 1, 040 inmates. The Luzira Women’s Prison had 400 inmates and 28 children. The

government of Uganda The politics of Uganda occurs in an Authoritarianism, authoritarian context. Since assuming office in 1986 at the end of the Ugandan Bush War, Ugandan civil war, Yoweri Museveni has ruled Uganda as an Autocracy, autocrat. Political party, Politi ...

has plans to relocate the prison and expand it to capacity of 10,000. As of June 2017, the facility housed more than 8,500 inmates.

References

External links