10 Most Dangerous Prisons In The World

From the infamous Guantanamo Bay to the terrifying Black Dolphin Prison of Russia, here are ten of the most dangerous prisons, and the horrors you won’t believe go on inside them!

10: Guantanamo Bay

The Guantanamo Bay detention camp is arguably the most famous prison belonging to the United States. It's located on the Guantanamo Bay naval base in southeastern Cuba. That’s right, this base in Cuba is actually under American control, though it’s complicated. It's also a fairly new prison, with construction beginning only back in 2002. In the 21st century, it’s been used as a secure facility to hold people that the United States suspected were terrorists. The US forces also placed confirmed terrorists captured outside the country, in places like Afghanistan and Iraq, into the prison there. The reason Guantanamo Bay became so famous is that it's dangerous.

There was a huge controversy after it came to light that many of the people being detained inside the camp were not being given proper human rights considerations, with some going as far as to say the staff at Guantanamo Bay were violating Geneva Conventions because they were torturing and abusing the detainees. One of the ways that Guantanamo Bay managed to be such a horrifying place is that it wasn't technically built on United States soil. President George W. Bush’s administration said that the prison was not obliged to grant constitutional protection of the prisoners because they were not in US territory and because the Geneva Conventions did not apply to unlawful enemy combatants.

Nonetheless, the US Supreme Court declared that Guantanamo was indeed in violation of the Geneva Convention. But this didn't really stop anything from happening. Guantanamo Bay just got even more secretive. For all we know, they could still be torturing people as we speak. Barack Obama indeed pledged to close the facility in 2009, but in 2018, Donald Trump signed an order to keep the camp open indefinitely. Who knows what will happen next?

9: Bang Kwang Prison

Bang Kwang Prison in Thailand may just be the most brutal prison on the planet. The conditions are harsh and often deadly. The prison itself is located outside of Bangkok, built between the years 1927 and 1931. It was meant to be a prison for holding the worst kind of offenders in the country. The inmates here are those who have been sentenced to stay in prison for upwards of 25 years. It's also filled with prisoners waiting to be executed.

But before prisoners can be executed, they often die at the hands of other inmates or go completely insane. Some reports say that for the first three months that an inmate is imprisoned here, they are chained with leg irons. This stops them from having the ability to move very well, and so they have to shuffle around with chains around their ankles. Those who have been given the death sentence are stuffed into leg irons and never let out. And they don't die in a very pleasant way either, as the death sentence is usually carried out by a firing squad. One of the weirder things about the prison is the food system. Nothing is free here, and everything except for just a meager bowl of rice and a bit of vegetable must be purchased. This enables wealthy prisoners to employ other prisoners as their servants, and it's created a kind of bizarre hierarchy inside the prison. Throughout Asia, Bang Kwang Prison is known as “Big Tiger.” Ironically, in some places in the West, it’s been called the Bangkok Hilton.

8: Alcatraz

Alcatraz is known for a lot of things, primarily for how hard it was to escape. But did you know that Alcatraz was also a seriously dangerous place to be locked up? According to Alcatraz History, one of the things that the inmates hated the most about staying on this island prison was the rule of silence. Inmates were prohibited from speaking to one another except during meals and recreation up until the 1930s. Even a single violation, meaning if an inmate spoke a single word, they could be harshly punished. Throughout the history of Alcatraz, which wasn't actually that long (it only functioned for 29 years), eight people were murdered by other inmates. Five men died by their own hands, while 15 perished from illnesses.

That equals 28 unnecessary deaths or about one every year. This number may not seem that shocking except when you realize that there were only about 250 prisoners at a single time. In total, 1545 men were imprisoned on the island, and while only 8 were murdered, there were definitely other acts of violence. For example, at least 36 prisoners tried to escape Alcatraz. Two inmates successfully made it off the island and were captured, seven were shot to death trying to escape, two drowned in the water between the island and the mainland, and five inmates were missing and never found, presumed dead and swept away into the ocean.

7: Urumqi No. 3 Detention Centre

The Urumqi No. 3 Detention Centre in China has been described as the largest prison in the country and a place that is worse than hell. I'm talking torture, electrocution, brainwashing, and disturbing incidents with cattle prods. According to some recent reports, the prison is currently filled with thousands of Uighur Muslims, with estimates that at least 10,000 people have been subject to some degree of torture. To give you an idea of how huge this detention center is, it's over 220 acres. That's twice the size of Vatican City. Satellite images have shown a dramatic increase in size since 2019, with nearly a mile of buildings added to the detention facility. International Amnesty released a report that described the center as a dystopian hellscape.

One of the teachers at the facility told reporters that people were tortured with iron chairs and electric batons. The prisoners here are forced to watch Chinese Communist Party history over and over as a form of mind control. The director of the center, Zhu Hongbin, actually came out and admitted that they control everything the prisoners watch. He also went on to say that the prisoners are “unbreakable,” and that they need to be taught why it's bad to commit crimes.

But there are two different interpretations of this giant prison. The Chinese say it's filled with murderers and thieves, while outside researchers claim it's actually full of innocent people who have been detained for crimes such as attending the wrong religious gathering or visiting the wrong country. These innocent people are then tortured, manipulated, and robbed of their humanity. What would you do if you were imprisoned for a crime you didn’t commit? Would you try to escape? Would you try to ride out your sentence? Or something else? Tell me your thoughts in the comments below.

6: Sabaneta Prison

When talking about violence, there is almost no worse place to be imprisoned than in Venezuela. Specifically, the Sabaneta Prison is one of the most murderous places in the entire world. According to a recent report from the BBC, 16 prisoners were killed in one day of violence in the western city of Maracaibo when fighting broke out in the prison between rival gangs. But this was not gang violence like you see on American TV. This was not a rerun of Oz. The inmates, in this case, were beheaded, some of them had their limbs literally ripped off their bodies, and it could be that some of the bodies were even bitten as though wild dogs attacked them. The minister of the prison, Iris Varela, said the violence came from an internal war raging inside the jail.

The prison was extremely over-encumbered, with about 3700 inmates inside a building designed to house only 700. It was recently shut down, though it’s unclear exactly how Venezuela will maintain order if its prisons are overcrowded and getting shuttered! If you thought US prisons are bad, just wait until you hear these statistics. First of all, Venezuela has one of the highest crime rates in the world. The prison population is exploding out of control, and 80% of the prisons in Venezuela are actually run by the inmates themselves, who are often armed with weapons and dramatically outnumber the actual security forces. At places like Sabaneta Prison, violent death is almost guaranteed.

5: Black Dolphin Prison

Black Dolphin Prison is considered the toughest and hardest in all of Russia. It's a high-security facility located on the border of Kazakhstan, known for harboring the most brutal and dangerous criminals in Russia, including cannibals, terrorists, and serial killers. A prison Lieutenant recently told National Geographic that the only way to escape Black Dolphin is by dying. There are about 700 inmates locked up in the prison – but just listen to this. The 700 inmates have killed about 3500 people collectively or about five murders per prisoner. That's a pretty terrifying rate.

The inmates here are imprisoned for life, like Vladimir Nikolayev, who is doing a full life sentence in Black Dolphin to kill a man during a fight and then eat his corpse. The prisoners here are kept under full surveillance 24 hours a day, each cell is locked inside of a different secure cell, and guards check on the inmates every 15 minutes. When prisoners are allowed to leave their cells, they must walk bent over at a 90-degree angle with their eyes looking at the floor – and if they’re ever allowed outside, they can only do so blindfolded. In Black Dolphin, it's not the other inmates that will kill you, even though they would probably really like to – instead, it’s the psychological torture that kills.

4: Columbia Correctional Institution

The Columbia Correctional Institute is one of the most dangerous prisons anywhere in America. And since it's Florida, you know it's full of dangerous weirdos! To prove the point, an inmate recently strangled his cellmate to death, then ripped out his eyes, mutilated his dead body, and made a necklace out of the victim’s body parts before heading off to the dining hall to eat breakfast. This guy hasn’t yet been named, and he's only one of the hundreds of dangerous criminals housed inside of the prison. His victim was Larry Mark, 58 years old and in prison since 1981 for committing robbery and murder.

The guy who killed him was apparently angry because Larry had been annoying him. At this correctional institute, being annoying means getting your eyeballs pulled out of your head. But the day was even worse. As if one violent murder wasn't enough, corrections officers said that earlier in the day before the brutal slaying of Larry, there was another melee that erupted between two armed gangs. Members of the Bloods and the Cutthroats got into a fight in which several men had their throats slashed and their bodies filled with stab holes.

3: Kerobokan Bali Prison Bali

Kerobokan Bali Prison Bali is known for its sandy beaches, unparalleled nature, and thousands of partying backpackers. But just a few miles away from the whole food cafes and bars on the beach, there is a living hell known as Kerobokan Bali Prison. The facility was designed to hold 300 prisoners, though today there are over 1400 inside its walls. Many of the inmates sleep on hard floors in the blistering heat, so crowded that men are forced to sleep in uncomfortable tangles. To the locals, the prison is known as “Hotel K.” The majority of the prisoners are drug offenders, people accused of using things like cannabis and cocaine.

And they don't take foreigners coming to their island to use drugs very lightly. There was an Australian convicted back in 2005 of smuggling cannabis into Bali, and she was sentenced to spend 20 years in Kerobokan Prison, though she only actually served nine. One of the most famous foreign prisoners to get stuck inside this hellhole was Ronnie Ramsay, chef Gordan Ramsay’s brother. He was caught in Bali with heroin and sentenced in 2007 to spend a bit of time in prison. But why is it so horrible? Well, there aren't really any rules. Prisoners are often found hanging in their cells, covered in vomit and flies. The men all share gross squat toilets that are so poorly maintained that there is literal human waste bubbling out of them. Oh yeah, and it’s filled with rats.

2: Millhaven Institution

The Millhaven Institute is one of the most dangerous prisons anywhere in Canada. It apparently used to be a place full of violence – but violence with rules. David Rose, a convicted murderer, recently gave news reporters some insight into how the violence in the institution used to play out. According to David, who by the way is spending the rest of his life in prison, back in the old days, inmates used to have a code of conduct. They would fight and be violent with each other, but would also be respectful. David says that in recent years, that code of conduct has collapsed and has made the prison significantly more dangerous than it has ever been before. According to him, none of the old rules apply to the new inmates.

And it's funny that he says this because there has been a recent 15% jump in a violent assault in the past three years alone. In the last year, there were 15,330 federal offenders guilty of violent crimes in Canada, with the most dangerous being housed in Millhaven. As it appears, prison is actually getting worse and more dangerous, not better at rehabilitation, even in Canada.

1: The Clink

The term “the clink” refers to jail. But what a lot of people don't know is that the Clink was a very real jail, the name of a prison in the 14th century in England. Nobody is exactly sure where the name came from, though some historians speculate that the jail was called “clink” because of the sound made by the blacksmith's hammer as it closed the irons around a person's wrists and ankles.

Others believe the Clink was named after the sound of the inmates clinking their drinking cups against the bars. In any case, the Clink was one of the worst prisons of all time. It operated from between 1151 until the year 1780. Because the jailers didn't make very much money, they were open to all kinds of bribes. If you couldn't afford food or bedding from the jailers, you were forced to starve to death and sleep on the floor. In fact, the poorest of the prisoners were forced to beg through the iron bars that led to the level of the street for anything the people passing by would give.

The result of this disgusting place was rampant disease and violence, with many of the prisoners getting sick, being forced to eat rats, and dying pretty miserably. Would you dare spend a night in one of these prisons? Let me know in the comments and thanks for reading.

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