Daily Star
British socialite Jasmine Hartin is currently locked up in a prison in Belize, accused of shooting dead policeman Henry Jemmott on the island.
She’s reportedly not been visited in Belize Central Prison by her family since she was arrested almost two weeks ago.
That may have helped take her mind off the hellish conditions she now finds herself living in.
The notorious jail is supposedly infested with scorpions, house members of rival gangs who have bloody battles inside and the inmates are fed fly-ridden pigs heads.
While Belize Central Prison will be a world away from the conditions Hartin will be used to, it is by no means the roughest prison in the world — here are a few of the worst.
Sabaneta Prison, Venezeula
Venezuela has one of the highest murder rates in the world, so perhaps it is not a surprise that the country’s prisons are among the most violent in the world.
Sabaneta Prison, in Maracaibo, was the most brutal of the lot.
It was hideously overcrowded, at one point housing 3,700 people in a space built for around 700. This lead to a prisoner to guard ratio of around 150:1.
Consequently, the inmates were very much in charge. They maintained their own kind of order, in the form of a gang-controlled hierarchy.
If prisoners wanted to drink, they had to drink straight from corroded bathroom pipes.
The war between rival gangs led to the beheading and dismemberment of several inmates and prison riots were par for the course.
In 1994 a riot broke out with, with inmates then starting a riot. It is claimed as many as 150 people died in the incident.
In 2013 alone there were 69 prisoners killed, when the jail was eventually shut down.
Notorious Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez once called Sabaneta “the gateway to the fifth circle of hell”.
Tacumbu Prison, Paraguay
It is a similar story in the infamous Paraguayan prison, with horrific overcrowding and some of South America’s most dangerous criminals proving a bad combination.
Around 3,000 prisoners are locked up in a jail supposed to hold 1,500.
Riots are common in the prison with many forced to sleep on the floor due to the cramped conditions.
The conditions are so bad that some inmates have taken to extreme measures in a bid to improve the situation or to move to another jail.
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