Logo: Michelle Karshan and staff and participants of Alternative Chance/Chans Altenativ in Haiti

Criminal Deportees in Haiti Receive No Food or Water in Jail

Image: Drinking tap water can be deadly!

Drawing by Nope warning Criminal Deportees not to drink tap water unless it is treated, and providing other options.

Do Criminal Deportees Receive Meals While Imprisoned?

Revised August 2007

by Michelle Karshan

Persons held in police station holding cells DO NOT receive food. It is expected that their family will bring them food on a daily basis.

When someone is held at a police station holding cell their families can usually drop by at any reasonable time to drop off a meal.

Very often police ask the person delivering the food to actually take a bite of the food before they are allowed to leave it, to assure that the food has not been poisoned.

Criminal Deportees arriving in Haiti are typically detained in a police station holding cell which may be in Port-au-Prince or outside the capital. If the person has family in Haiti they may reside extremely far away or not be reachable by telephone or have no family at all.

Sometimes arrangements are made with relatives living nearby. Very often family does not bring food -- sometimes they can't afford to travel or provide food. The other reality is that there is no refrigeration for foods being delivered so families typically only bring one meal.

We (Alternative Chance/Chans Altenativ - advocacy program for Criminal Deportees in Haiti) experienced a crisis in 1998 when President Preval's government started locking up arriving Criminal Deportees in various police stations throughout the country. It was unfair to expect that family members would feed the prisoners because many of the deportees had no family in Haiti and of course they were being held in jails very far from the towns or cities where their families actually lived.

At that time our program had to respond to that crisis because there were many Criminal Deportees, some very sick with diabetes, high blood pressure, TB or AIDS, who were languishing in jails without any meals. We ended up cooking the food ourselves and delivering meals to various police stations throughout the capital region including Thomasseau and Croix-des-Bouquets. For the Criminal Deportees imprisoned in Archaie and Leogane at the time, we had to hire a local person to cook for the prisoners.

During that period of time, Claudette Etienne, a mother of two from Miami deported to Haiti as a Criminal Deportee, died after four days being held in a police station on Delmas.Ms. Etienne had no food of her own and ate some scraps given her by a police officer, and she drank the tap water. She developed a fierce case of dysentery and died.

What I found amazing at the time, and have reflected on a lot again in the last month, was the general indifference to the problem of Criminal Deportees not being able to eat when in detention. I appealed to many people, both Haitian and American, and clergy, at the time but very few people responded. I think people were not sympathetic because it involved convicted criminals from the US. Some people were appalled and were supportive, and a Haitian woman from the elite donated lots of food that we in turn used to cook the meals with. For us, it was impossible at the time to sit by while anyone was starving to death - convicted felon or not.

When President Aristide returned to the presidency the practice was to detain arriving Criminal Deportees in the National Penitentiary where they did at least receive daily meals.

Recently the new government ordered newly arriving Criminal Deportees to be held in police stations, where once again they are not provided any food, water or medical care.