Security & Strategic Review June 2011 (ISSN 1741-4202)

In mid-June a prison riot claimed 22 lives — the second such episode in less than 10 months — and prompted a massive response from the government, accompanied by claims that NGOs and opposition parties were somehow seeking to use the episode to destabilise the government. These developments brought again to the fore the problem of massive prison overcrowding and the inability to control them that has fostered official tolerance of armed prison ‘mafias'.