Nearly 50 prisoners escaped from a dilapidated prison in the southwest of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) during the night from Monday to Tuesday, highlighting the country’s chronic prison infrastructure crisis.
According to Arsene Kasiama, coordinator of a local civil society organisation, 47 of the 104 inmates held at the central prison of Idiofa broke free after breaching a wall. The prison, located about 600 kilometres east of the capital Kinshasa, was built in 1937 during Belgian colonial rule and has long been in disrepair.
The escapees were reportedly crammed into one of the facility’s two remaining operational cells. “They were suffocating, so they breached the wall and fled,” Kasiama explained. The officer on duty fired several warning shots in an attempt to stop them, but none of the fugitives were injured or recaptured during the incident.
Confirming the jailbreak, Idiofa administrator Adelard Kintolo described the prison as dangerously outdated. “The fence is there, but it won’t hold much longer, the walls are worn out. We ask the government to take this into account… they could consider the construction of a new prison facility to improve detention conditions,” Kintolo told AFP.
Prison breaks are a recurring problem in the DRC, where the majority of facilities date back to the colonial era and were never modernised to meet current security or human rights standards. Many are severely overcrowded, with poor ventilation, inadequate sanitation, and minimal medical care conditions that rights groups say violate basic human dignity.
Advocacy organisations have repeatedly urged the Congolese government to address prison overcrowding, which is fuelled by slow judicial processes and the detention of individuals for minor offences. They argue that improving prison infrastructure and reforming the justice system would reduce escape risks while ensuring humane treatment of inmates.
As of Tuesday afternoon, authorities had not confirmed whether any of the 47 escapees had been tracked down. Security forces have launched a search operation in and around Idiofa, but local residents remain concerned that the incident underscores a deeper structural problem.
With crumbling colonial-era walls and overcrowded cells, the Idiofa prison break serves as yet another reminder of the urgent need for prison reform in the DRC before more escapes follow
