For Sale in the Prison Canteen “Aqrab” Prison

Source: Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights

Author(s):

Original Link: https://eipr.org/en/publications/sale-prison-canteen-%E2%80%9Caqrab%E2%80%9D-prison

Whether in “Aqrab” or Tora Farm, Qanater or Minya prison, there is a need to investigate and address the deepening marketization of prison life: how prisoners’ most basic needs—those that the prison authorities are required to provide by law—are instead sold at exorbitant prices for the sake of the canteen’s profit. The move towards the prison-for-profit mode, by providing prisoners’ basic needs for sale in Egyptian prisons, is the thematic umbrella of this research.

This report specifically takes the case of the canteen in “Aqrab” as its focus. Bearing in mind:

(1) on the one hand, that much of the existing literature and public discourse on the medical and torture abuses at “Aqrab” does not include and unpack the prison’s economic exploitation of inmates as one of these abuses;

(2) and on the other hand, that as an exceptional facility –as a maximum-security prison—“Aqrab” is a site where several trends present in other prisons are most concentrated.

As such, this report continues to zoom in on how prisoners experience the canteen in “Aqrab” prison, as a way to understand the resonances of these practices to varying degrees across other prisons–and advocate for an end to the systematic abuses canteen and visit practices entail.

Read more at Original Link.

Skip to toolbar